The number of students being home-schooled in Texas is on the rise, with some 300,000 children staying home as the school term started Monday.

According to the Texas Home School Coalition, the number of Texans opting to home school has grown about 20 percent to an estimated 120,000 families and 300,000 children in the past five years, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that families primarily opted to home school because they wanted to provide religious or moral lessons to their children. Parental concerns about safety, peer pressure and the academic instruction at traditional schools were other reasons cited.

In Texas, parents who wish to home school are not required to register with any agency or to get their curriculum approved. Legal rulings have upheld that parents simply are supposed to have a curriculum that teaches reading, spelling, grammar, math and good citizenship.

In the red, lawmakers may get schooled By Enrique Rangel enrique.rangel@morris.com

in next year’s session of the Legislature lawmakers are expected to face what could be the largest budget shortfall in state history, perhaps as much as $18 billion over the next two fiscal years.

most school districts now find themselves in the same financial hole as before.

the school districts in Amarillo and Lubbock receive $5,062 and $5,067, respectively, per student a year, according to figures MALDEF has compiled. By contrast, the rural Sundown Independent School District in Hockley County, one of the wealthiest districts in the state, receives $12,538 per student. As a result, it’s estimated that at least 60 percent of school districts will have to use reserve money in the upcoming academic year to meet operating costs.

groups such as the statewide affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, are calling on Gov. Rick Perry to accept $830 million in federal aid for Texas public schools. But Perry and legislative leaders have refused on grounds that it would only make matters worse.

in last year’s session the Legislature used $3.3 billion in federal stimulus money to balance the education budget. The money included a state-mandated pay raise for teachers.

My ereader–a Barnes and Noble Nook–arrived today! What a thrill! On my way to a meeting, the person who received the mail brought the box straight to me in the hallway. I took it along to the office where we were gathering. When I arrived at the meeting, the question preceeded the business, “I’ve never seen one. May I?” So I opened the box, pulled it out and the first words out the other person’s mouth was something like, “Is it like an iPad?”

“No,” I replied with a smile. “It’s less expensive…and I have access to other technology for that. This is for pleasure reading.” My smile grew as I remembered the 100+ books I’d downloaded in ePub format last night.

Sigh. In my office–full of technology folks–the Nook also got a lukewarm reaction. “Can I swish the pages by moving my finger across the screen, like on my iPhone?”“No,” I replied, “you have to push this button to advance the pages.”“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” came the reply. “I’ve gotten accustomed to moving my finger across the screen.”(of course, you can swish your finger across the touch screen on a Nook to get to the previous or next page but I forgot that in the discussion).

When I got home with my new Nook, my wife questioned my sanity…an “inexpensive” book reader you can’t even surf the web with? Hmm…I tried to minimize her concerns, pointing out that I’d already downloaded enough ePub books from Baen to not buy any new print books for quite awhile! Surprisingly, I hadn’t ever read any of the books available from Baen’s Free Library, not to mention the rich variety of free sci-fi ebooks available on other sites.

My daughter greeted the addition of the Nook as an enemy of print books, signaling the demise of beloved friends, betrayed by her own father. She refused to look at it.

Just to clarify, ebooks, for the sake of this discussion, are books which are available electronically, rather than printed on dead trees, and which can be read on an electronic device of some sort. And completely free ebooks, just now, are those which are legitimately available for free. Other options exist. We all know that. (Source: MakeUseOf.com via Shambles.net (great list of ebook sources)

Those expressions of dismay and disappointment aside, I found myself looking at the Nook and wondering, maybe I made the wrong choice. But then, I turned it on, registered it with my account info, and the two books I’d purchased appeared. I connected to the WiFi connection. So far, so good. But then, what really knocked my socks off was Calibre.

calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features.

Again, I’m amazed at the power of Calibre, a free open source ebook converter and manager, that converts to a variety of formats, including support for a variety of eReaders:

It’s pretty amazing in that you get a preview of the cover of the book…I was thrilled to find Andre Norton’s books available for free, finding the entire collection of stories (Time Traders, Defiant Agents) that I’d read long ago and were now out of print.

Aside from free ePubs available, I have to confess my profound appreciation for the Baen authors and publisher, who share their books in a variety of formats.

You have to admire the Baen Free Library of Books. Note that they offer books in a variety of formats, including Mobi (which is Kindle friendly) and ePub (which is Nook and iPad friendly).

Read a bit about how they got started from Eric Flint below:

Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We’re calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached….

There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!

I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows….

It’s definitely worth reading Eric Flint’s opinion. It’s an important one to consider, but I may have to disagree with his opinion in this way. He points out the following:

Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We’re talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.

I disagree…consider these links below with the amount of books available for “free” from pirates…I do not consider this that simple. Entire collections of books are available online for download via torrent…if I were a book publisher, I’d be worried! Yet, one seldom hears of this…in fact, the knowledge of these is kept secret.

This is just a sample of the over 20 pages of “torrents” available with ebooks that are copyrighted…even the King James Bible appears. The search took all of 10 minutes, if that, using Google Search Engine.

The question is, how long would it take to find a random selection of these books online using a Google Search for a torrent file? Let me pick one title from each vendor above and see if I can link to a torrent online:

While torrents are often used for legitimate purposes–imagine downloading a DVD ISO of a GNU/Linux distribution–they are also being used for piracy. A short definition of what “Torrent” means:

Torrent is a small file (around few kilobytes) with the suffix .torrent, which contains all the information needed to download a file the torrent was made for. That means it contains file names, their sizes, where to download from and so on. You can get torrents for almost anything on lots of web sites and torrent search engines. (Source)

Of course, I am sympathetic to this other point that Flint makes…it pretty much sums up part of the satisfaction I derive from blogging and sharing my work online:

I don’t know any author, other than a few who are — to speak bluntly — cretins, who hears about people lending his or her books to their friends, or checking them out of a library, with anything other than pleasure. Because they understand full well that, in the long run, what maintains and (especially) expands a writer’s audience base is that mysterious magic we call: word of mouth.

Word of mouth, unlike paid advertising, comes free to the author — and it’s ten times more effective than any kind of paid advertising, because it’s the one form of promotion which people usually trust.

As I look at my new Nook, bursting with more Baen books I couldn’t hope to read in a year (I have all this other “academic” reading to do), I realize I probably am not the run of the mill ebook reader. I’m not one of those folks that runs out and buys the latest book and reads it because I want to talk about it around the water cooler.

Do you know where you can find free ePub publications for your eReader, especially the Nook?

Earlier this year, I shared eReader Indecision. After hemming and hawing about the monumental decision to abandon print, switch to eBooks, and selecting an eBook reader I could afford, I finally made a decision and ordered the Barnes and Noble Nook Wi-Fi. (Here’s one of the reasons why I didn’t get a Kindle…lack of format support, such as for ePub…no iPad because I just don’t see folks spending that much money for etextbooks). I’m hoping I didn’t totally make a mistake but only hands-on experience and time will tell. Also, I’m hoping that the Nook Wi-Fi will be something that will work well in a school environment where 3G access isn’t necessarily encouraged (potential CIPA violations).

Veteran “nooker” Bud Hunt shared a few Twitter direct messages with me about the Nook and its benefits. One of the ones he mentioned was support for a variety of ebook formats, some of which are included in the list below.

Here’s the list that I know of so far that works with the Nook, as well as links to book providers of that format. There are others but I’ve excluded the ones that “charge” for books (or tried to).

Adobe ePublication – These are the “digital rights management” (DRM) titles that are available.

Content loaded into Calibre is ALL FREE. As a grade 6-12 student, I would have been in heaven with this many “books” available to read.

Sending data to your eReader is a cinch…

Note that you can right click on and convert books to a variety of formats…ePub works great on Nook and iPad:

So, the Nook makes a great inexpensive eReader solution that is MORE open than Kindle. Add Calibre to the mix, though, and you can pick your eReader of choice since you can convert to anything you want!

The ABCs of e-book format conversion: Easy Calibre tips for the Kindle, Sony and Nook By John Schember

E-book readers are becoming more and more common.

different brands don’t read the same kinds of e-books. This mess is like the one in the music world where you might find such formats as WMA, MP3, and AAC. In e-books, the same confusion exists—the Tower of eBabel, as some call it.

there are a very good reasons why you should know about the major formats, what you reader supports and how to convert between formats.

Many Web sites offer legal and often free books. Everything from public domain books to well known and less known authors. Also, you can shop for the best prices at a number of small independent e-book stores.

Often you can download these e-books in a variety of formats, but you won’t always find them in the format your e-book reader supports. Here is where conversion comes in.

The Nook, the new reader from Barnes and Noble, can read EPUB, the same format as the Sony although there are now some catches with DRMed books.

Many vendors like to have and control their own formats so they are not dependent on outside companies. They also have the benefit of being able to license their format for use by others. This also allows them to lock users into their platform.

The EPUB format, from the International Digital Publishing Forum, is an industry standard intended to reduce these problems.

Many easy-to-use tools exist for converting e-books. For Kindle users, the Mobipocket Desktop is a good choice. Amazon also provides a conversion service that allow you to email them e-books which they will convert and send directly to your Kindle.

there is a more general tool that can convert between a large number of formats. Calibre supports the Kinde, the Sony PRS line, the Nook and a large number of other devices. It is is a full e-book management application that can organize your e-book library, handle automated news downloads from a number of sources, and convert between a large number of e-book formats. It is a one stop, all in one tool.

The PRS line from Sony supports EPUB, LRF, LRX, RTF, PDF, TXT.

The Kindle supports AZW, MOBI, PRC, AZW1, TPZ, TXT.

for the Kindle, you really only need to worry about Mobipocket (MOBI)

you only need to worry about EPUB (same for the Nook

Downloading Calibre You can download Calibre here with your Firefox, Internet Explorer or other browser. Versions exist for Windows, OS X and Linux. Calibre has an easy-to-use Welcome Wizard to help new comers get up to speed. Just answer the Wizard’s questions.

Using Calibre to convert is very easy. Plug in your e-book reader. Open Calibre and click the “Add books” button on the top left. Select your book. Click open. Select your book in the library list. By now Calibe should have detected your e-book reader. Click “Send to device” in middle of the top toolbar. Calibre is smart enough to know if the book is in a format supported by your reader. If it’s not, it will ask you if you want to auto convert it. Say yes, and it will take care of the conversion and put the book on your reader.

Calibre worries about the formats and converting for you.

Auto conversion is the easiest way to go and in most cases will be all you need to do.

After adding a book click the “Edit meta information” button. Fill in the title and author or the ISBN (it is better to use the ISBN for the paper or hard back version than the e-book’s ISBN). Then click “Fetch metadata from server”. This will pull in all kinds of information about the book. If there is no convert image next to the metadata entry or if it is a generic image it is a good idea to click “Download cover”.

Now that the metadata is all correct, click the “Convert E-books” button. This screen looks very complicated but realize that the majority of options here are best left alone. Most of the options only need to be changed on a are per book and in special cases basis. There is one option that is very important and may need to be changed. At the top right there is a drop down for “Output format.” This control what format the conversion will result in. Kindle owners will want to select MOBI and Sony and Nook owners will want to use EPUB.

One limitation using a tool like Calibre is the inability to edit the book before conversion. Calibre simply moves the content and formatting from one format to another. It is not a editing tool.

Not all e-book formats support the same formatting. It can be lost when converting to a format that supports limited or no formatting.

MOBI and EPUB both support complex formatting so you won’t have to worry about this when using these formats.

Barnes and Noble sells books in the PDB format (along with EPUB) and as you might expect it is supported by the Nook.

PDB is not really an e-book format. It is a container for e-book formats. Think of it like a zip file. You put other files into a zip file so you only have to worry about having one file instead of many. That is what PDB essentially does for e-books. There are 28 e-book formats that can be put into the PDB container that I know of.

The two most common formats found in PDB files are PalmDoc (also known as textread and Aportis) and eReader.

The PDB files sold by Barnes and Noble are in the eReader format.

DRM, as noted, stands for Digital Rights Management.

DRM restricts what you can do with an e-book.

Any e-book with DRM cannot be converted to a different format.

Mobi, PRC, and AZW are the same format. If a reader reads one of those format, it can read the others. It’s the same case with LRF/LRX and AZW1/TPZ.

Mobi and ePub DRM is easy to remove and there has never been a case in the United States of someone getting fined for removing DRM for personal use.

Barnes and Noble, it looks like ebooks purchase at their website and downloaded directly to a Nook are usually in the ePub format, and they use the B&N social engineering DRM (key is name and credit card number), but if they are downloaded from their website to a computer, it is usually downloaded in the eReader format. Currently, only the Nook is able to read the B&N style DRM ePub format

if your friend is computer savvy, and willing to install python and the scripts to strip DRM and convert it from Ereader format to ePub

I recently got a Nook and I have some older Baen CD rom libraries that only have these formats on them .doc, .lit, .prc, .rb, .rtf and of course many html pages. DRM is not an issue with these disk. What I want to know is which format would be the best to convert to epub using Calibre?

The large variation in size is because some formats are compressed and others are not. From the Calibre FAQ: What are the best source formats to convert?¶ In order of decreasing preference: LIT, MOBI, EPUB, HTML, PRC, RTF, PDB, TXT, PDF

In “Friend, foe or strong leader?,” Amber Teamann explores the challenges teachers face in using social media. But the post is more than a reflection on a question that could lead to termination–Should we friend our students? Rather, it explores the tension between who we are and who we purport to be for financial gain.

While we’ve often agreed that MORE time with a student can be valuable, have a greater impact academically on students, that time has usually been characterized as more “seat time,” focused on tutoring students. Social media enables us to reach students at any time, often including them in our lives as educators…the problem is, what happens when our lives aren’t as educational as our bosses would like them to be?

The definition of what is educational behavior is narrowly defined as what happens in the classroom or academic setting. Simply because we can expand the boundaries of the classroom, knock down the walls of the classroom using social media, it doesn’t mean that the walls of our privacy as educators should be knocked down as well. Amber acknowledges this point when she writes, “As educators, we know we are held to a higher and different standard within society.”

When boundaries intersect, worlds collide. Amber flirts with danger when she uses Facebook to be a social butterfly, as if Facebook–which I dropped as a tool for social media recently–could actually be trusted with her future in the face of a “higher and different standard within society.” While Twitter and Plurk offer great opportunities for building a professional learning network, too often, they are used by foolish educators as a place to announce their dis-satisfaction with a host of issues that could lead to disciplinary action, if not termination. Crossing lanes on the “Information Superhighway,” a term I haven’t used in a long time given the power of the network and connected learning as a more apt metaphor, can result in a head-on collision for teachers. While Amber and others are themselves in public via Facebook, it must be a sanitized “me,” that adheres to the standard Amber acknowledges.

At a time when passion-based learning is of great interest, why not pursue a position that allows you to be who you ARE rather than who you must be to satisfy a standard? Accept the consequences of being yourself. If being yourself is a matter of being open, transparent, then embrace that…just be aware that the job you have may not lend itself to your newly found values. If you can be open, transparent, and that raises no eyebrows in your society, then you’re in the right line of work as an educator.

Amber reflects on leadership that keeps everyone at a safe and equal distance. While we all sometimes retreat to solitude, human beings are wired for social behavior and engagement with others. Simply, for a leader, there is no personal and professional persona. You are who you are, 24/7 to the benefit of those around you. A leader can’t be one 8 hours a day, then switch it off when they get home. Leadership takes a lifetime, and the moments which fuel the learning necessary happen all the time.

That’s why I believe that blogging is so valuable. It allows reflection on who we are, and what we can do to get ahead. . .it acknowledges that every experience provides the fertilizer for leadership growth. Those who seek to separate their public and private personas are simply playing at being one or the other. The lack of alignment between what is and who you pretend to be will tear you apart. Align the two, find a position that fits, and you will be more confident in the decisions you make…and from that confidence, followers will appear. If they don’t, it matters little. You are pursuing your passions, accepting who you are, acting from your strength at the center of who you are, flexible and open to possibility, unbound.

It looks like Apple, Inc., is exploring a new business opportunity: spyware and what we’re calling “traitorware.” While users were celebrating the new jailbreaking and unlocking exemptions, Apple was quietly preparing to apply for a patent on technology that, among other things, would allow Apple to identify and punish users who take advantage of those exemptions or otherwise tinker with their devices. This patent application does nothing short of providing a roadmap for how Apple can — and presumably will — spy on its customers and control the way its customers use Apple products.

it’s “traitorware,” since it is designed to allow Apple to retaliate against you if you do something Apple doesn’t like.

Apple’s patent provides for a device to investigate a user’s identity, ostensibly to determine if and when that user is “unauthorized,” or, in other words, stolen.

the technology would allow Apple to record the voice of the device’s user, take a photo of the device’s user’s current location or even detect and record the heartbeat of the device’s user. Once an unauthorized user is identified, Apple could wipe the device and remotely store the user’s “sensitive data.” Apple’s patent application suggests it may use the technology not just to limit “unauthorized” uses of its phones but also shut down the phone if and when it has been stolen.

This patented device enables Apple to secretly collect, store and potentially use sensitive biometric information about you. This is dangerous in two ways: First, it is far more than what is needed just to protect you against a lost or stolen phone.

Apple’s technology includes various types of usage monitoring — also very privacy-invasive. This patented process could be used to retaliate against you if you jailbreak or tinker with your device in ways that Apple views as “unauthorized” even if it is perfectly legal under copyright law.

Here’s a sample of the kinds of information Apple plans to collect: The system can take a picture of the user’s face, “without a flash, any noise, or any indication that a picture is being taken to prevent the current user from knowing he is being photographed”; The system can record the user’s voice, whether or not a phone call is even being made; The system can determine the user’s unique individual heartbeat “signature”;

To determine if the device has been hacked, the device can watch for “a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device”;

The user’s “Internet activity can be monitored or any communication packets that are served to the electronic device can be recorded”; and

The device can take a photograph of the surrounding location to determine where it is being used.

Apple will know who you are, where you are, and what you are doing and saying and even how fast your heart is beating.

this information “can be gathered every time the electronic device is turned on, unlocked, or used.”

When an “unauthorized use” is detected, Apple can contact a “responsible party.” A “responsible party” may be the device’s owner, it may also be “proper authorities or the police.”

Apple does not explain what it will do with all of this collected information on its users, how long it will maintain this information, how it will use this information, or if it will share this information with other third parties

I love to read. If I had my choice, I’d spend my time in a bookstore or library picking through the books, especially the Science-Fiction and Fantasy area. Then, would come Westerns a la Louis L’Amour, then spy thrillers. In the non-fiction area, books about writing, teaching writing, leadership and motivation. These have been my interests for many years and deviating from what I like means a book finds its way into the resale pile. For me, Half-Price books is as close to nirvana as you can get–well, maybe a Half-Price book near a beach unpolluted by BP Oil Spill might get me closer.

As my daughter and I walked into Half-Price books, the old argument of print books vs ebooks came up again. To buy an ebook reader is to betray those old friends waiting for us at home, some of which I’ve known since I was as young as 11 years old. Their covers, pages, the stories are a visceral link to the love my father had for me, taking me to the book store to pick out a few books. Our shared love for Dana Fuller Ross’ “Wagons West” series continued with my daughter, who still reads the books now. Louis L’Amour, Stephen King, Dean Koontz also grace my shelves, and I

This past week, one of my opening slides at an East Texas school district’s convocation keynote–“Embracing Technology for Positive Change”–showed the the impact eReaders are having, eliminating print books. With that presentation, I may have talked myself into buying one. The agony of which to buy, though, began. Should I buy the Kindle 3 or the Nook? As much as I love Barnes and Noble, I’m in love with the books available through it, not the place or the brand itself. That said, I have complained about Amazon’s so-called “digital rights management,” a practice I disagree with. If you are so inclined, visit Defective by Design for another perspective, especially the Amazon Kindle Swindle.

Amazon deleted books that were already available in print, but in our paperless future—when all books exist as files on servers—courts would have the power to make works vanish completely. Zittrain writes: “Imagine a world in which all copies of once-censored books like Candide, The Call of the Wild, and Ulysses had been permanently destroyed at the time of the censoring and could not be studied or enjoyed after subsequent decision-makers lifted the ban.” This may sound like an exaggeration; after all, we’ll surely always have file-sharing networks and other online repositories for works that have been decreed illegal. But it seems like small comfort to rely on BitTorrent to save banned art. The anonymous underground movements that have long sustained banned works will be a lot harder to keep up in the world of the Kindle and the iPhone.

An empirical study done by Patricia Akester, a professor of law at Cambridge, found that DRM does more harm than good on an individual basis and in one instance even led the consumer who otherwise would not have to obtain an illegally shared copy. This user, who is sight-impaired, downloaded an ebook from Amazon and was surprised to learn that it did not enable the text-to-speech option. Upon contacting Amazon, which does not refund ebooks, she was referred to the publisher who in turn referred her back to Amazon. Not receiving any help from Amazon or the publisher, she then decided to download an illegal copy that provided the text-to-speech function. As Nate Anderson writes, “The study confirms what anyone who has ever wanted to rip a DVD to their computer or iPod could have told you: DRM, coupled with anticircumvention laws, makes pirates of us all.”

You can understand that purchasing an eReader for me is an act of betrayal…a betrayal of the print books that accummulate dust on my shelves at home, kept more for the memories they evoke rather than the stories, the anti-DRM approach I advocate for. That said, I would love to have an ebook reader. My only wish was that such an ereader was based on the Android OS or GNU/Linux OS (that is OPEN without DRM) and was similarly priced (or lower) to the more popular ereaders. . .

At this point, it appears the Kindle 3 is the clear winner over the Nook, although some folks–like Bud the Teacher–prefer the Nook because you easily add other content to it. I’m not yet convinced by Bud, although I want to be…and every review for the Nook move me along in that direction. I like the idea of being able to read multiple formats…the problem is, the Kindle 3 looks like it has support for PDF as well. Read this great review. Of course, Kindle WiFi is also a great looking choice.

A short time ago, someone asked this question on Moodle Mayhem email list:

I have a quick question. I don’t yet have my course set up to enable groups.

I have a course with approximately 50 resources (audio, pdf’s, video files) that I would like different students to see, as well as hiding some of the files for some of the students/

If I enable groups, can I then assign students to groups and then designate each particular resource as visible only to a certain group?

This presented the opportunity for me to share something I’d just read about in Ian Wild’s Moodle Course Conversion (listen to a podcast of Ian Wild online at http://moodlemayhem.org).

Here’s my response to the person asking the question above:

Yes. I’m sure other folks could explain this better since my knowledge of grouping, groups and assigning different tasks to each group is theoretical at this point.

When you set up your course to enable groups–separate groups, force=yes–you can then issue each member of a specific group an enrollment key. When they sign up for the course using their group enrollment key, they automatically become a part of the group you’ve assigned them to. Group A’s enrollment key is “groupa” and Groups B and C can’t see what A group is doing.

Contrast this approach with one enrollment key for an entire course that allows everyone to see everything else people are doing.

Now, in addition to this, you can assign specific tasks–using the grouping button–to Group A that aren’t necessarily available to Group B or C. This allows you to differentiate instruction for your students according to grouping (gasp, that sounds like homogenous grouping).

Using this approach, you can also make certain activities/resources available or not depending on group membership.

Recently, I shared this Moodle Tip on how to make changes to MySQL database in Moodle to facilitate creation of enrollment keys for multiple courses. I realized I hadn’t shared this with the MoodleMayhem email list, most of which I would guess know how to do this. Of course, it’s easy to assume others know stuff when they may not (happens to me all the time).

Here is the email I shared:

Thought I’d share this with the list members…since we had lots of Moodle courses without enrollment keys, were bringing on students who could “enrol” in any course, we needed to quickly add enrollment keys. Rather than going one by one, there is a way to do it via MySQL. It wasn’t hard, but for those who aren’t familiar with it…

Thanks for this. So then, you set a single enrollment key for all courses that did not already have one? If so, will you now notify teachers, and if so, how will you do this efficiently?

My response follows below:

Here’s what we did:

1) After doing the enrollment key replacement, delete all “old” student accounts. In our case, it’s “@student.districtname.net” so it was pretty easy to do a bulk delete of all 6K accounts that had been created over the last few years.

2) Clean out old course instructors/teachers…I went back to anyone who hadn’t logged in since June, 2009.

3) Create a new course called “Teachers’ Lounge” and subscribed all remaining users (which all instructors).

4) Sent out a news forum post/update to all subscribed users notifying them that their courses now have enrollment keys.

And, that’s that!

I thought it was a nifty solution that didn’t take long to implement…and I couldn’t help but wonder why we hadn’t set something up like that before! How would you have done it?

Thanks to a tweet from Jay Rosen, I found myself skimming The Columbia Book of Quotations. This quote jumped out at me…I think if I limit myself to the first two commands, that will be sufficient for now AND eternity.

Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. (Revelation 1:19)

The first two parts–write therefore the things that you have seen and those that are–provide a nice direction for non-fiction writers (ahem, bloggers). For fiction writers, the whole quote applies.

This may replace my favorite quote of all time–Ben Franklin’s one appearing below–since you can’t argue with a Biblical mandate, even if taken out of context (what bible quote ISN’T taken out of context these days? (smile)).

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

As I get older and have less time due to other responsibilities, I find that the “do something worth writing” becomes more of “support others” in doing something worth writing about. Since I have always seen my writing as that of a poor hack, lacking the luster of poets (my standard is Alexander Pope) and more insightful essayists, I can only aspire write something worth reading.

Of course, write the things you have seen and those that are…well, I figure I can do that! Could this be also a commandment for plurking or twittering? That “those that are” part implies obtaining a clear perception of what is, the absolute truth of a thing. Again, perfect for blogging. . .and let the chips fall where they may.

Thanks to a colleague for sharing this bit of exciting news! An organization known as The Source for Learning (SFL) is offering educators Clear 4G wireless accounts FREE to educators in various locations, including my home city of San Antonio, Texas !

The free accounts will include a user device to enable reception. User devices might be stationary modems for a room or USB modems (i.e. “sticks”) for a laptop (see http://www.clear.com/shop/devices/mobile). Users will also have free access to SFLMedia which is a combination of TeachersFirst and an assortment of streaming video clips covering selective topics.

This pilot program is part of the commitment of SFL to support education in all forms. If you are located in the above communities and you wish to participate, you will be expected to sign a letter stating your willingness to use this account for educational purposes for a specific number of hours each week. SFL will match the address of your school and/or home to be certain you are within the Clear coverage areas. Participation can only be offered to those located within the coverage area. You are welcome to share this application link with others you know who are located in one of the coverage areas.

The free accounts will include a user device to receive wireless 4G Internet along with free access to SFLMedia. If you (or an educator you know) are located in one of these communities and you want to learn more details and apply for this FREE offering, read the details and apply for The Source for Learning: Broadband for Education Pilot Project. Feel free to share this information with teachers you know in these locations.

Problem:We’ve just activated student logins via LDAP authentication. Unfortunately, our Moodle instance has courses that do not have enrollment keys. This means students could login to ANY Moodle without an enrollment key. We’ve just created 70 courses without enrollment keys…do you see the problem?

Solution:One solution is to go through each course and update the settings to include an enrollment key. This would be time-consuming.

Another solution is to assign a uniform enrollment key to ALL courses that lack an enrollment key. But how?

In the “mdl_course” table, there is a field by the name of “password.” This password is the enrollment key for a course. But how to change the password for all?

One way is to use a SQL statement that updates all blank enrollment key settings. Here is the statement that FINDS courses with blank enrollment keys:

SELECT fullname,password

FROM `mdl_course`

WHERE PASSWORD = ”

Before updating ALL the courses at once, you might want to check to see if it will work. Try this:

update mdl_course

set password=’clef’

where fullname=’Music Technology’

Verify that the change took place with this command:

SELECT fullname,password

FROM `mdl_course`

where fullname=’Music Technology’

The results of the query should reveal that the password is now “clef” without quotes.

To update the “password” field for ALL courses en masse, use the following SQL commands:

update mdl_course

set password=’clef’

WHERE PASSWORD =”

Another way to verify this is to login to the course and check the AVAILABILITY settings:

Be willing to ask an expert – even if that expert happens to be a first year teacher.

Model great learning and teaching.

Recognize positive growth; often.

Without going into too much depth about that blog post, here is my list of suggestions on the subject of improving leadership, IMHO:

As superintendent or principal, focus your organization on the power of technology to accomplish 3 specific actions:

Continuous professional learning through a global network of educators sharing what they are learning every day via social networking/bookmarking (e.g. Twitter and Diigo.com) and social media tools (e.g. Moodle, blogs).

Enhance daily interactions with Community–parents–that model the use of these to disseminate information, facilitate data collection (e.g. GoogleDoc’s Forms, Moodle Questionnaire are two that come to mind), data mining, and most importantly, reflective dialogue.

Share positive stories about how we are using technology as part of our work to enhance student, teacher, administrator engagement possibilities.

Set up a campus/district Moodle that enables sharing of important topics, professional development ideas. I am particularly thrilled to point to an example in a large urban district in San Antonio where a principal and staff member worked hard to get people going in the right direction. This isn’t a campus Moodle for students to use, but for the faculty to build an online professional learning community.

Encourage students to share their perspective on using technology they are familiar with in the context of school, allowing for open conversations and opinion sharing to influence the community. Share those perspectives as podcasts a la Mabry Online

A few folks–myself included–were having trouble installing DragMath add-on in Moodle! Apparently, Marc Grober–now maintaining the module–heard about it and decided to join MoodleMayhem.org email list to help out!

Dragmath is an equation editor (like the one shown above); apparently, math folks using Moodle will really like this! ;->

After some emails flying back and forth, Marc worked hard to identify the gaps in our understanding–and exemplifying the value of the Moodle community of developers!–and pretty soon, we had all we needed. What caused the confusion initially was out of date instructions, one of the challenges of having to find information on FOSS solutions. Fortunately, Marc was able to point us all in the right direction!!

I can now confirm I’ve successfully installed DragMath in a Moodle instance I am responsible for! Steps followed appear below:

Go to the Moodle and open up anything with the HTML editor (I did a simple label). The DragMath icon appears:

As you might guess, the process can be even easier if you follow Marc’s explicit instructions. I had to take this approach because I was installing via a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) connection on a server I didn’t have GUI access to from home.

What’s also neat is that Moodle 2.0 will apparently have DragMath as “core,” or part of the default setup.

Driving back from East Texas earlier today after having spent a wonderful morning keynoting the Woodville ISD Convocation–you have to love a District that begins with a prayer and ends with the school song beautifully sung, and celebrates moving forward together and achieving their goals–on Embracing Technology for Positive Change, I found myself reflecting on some of the insights I’d gained from listening to the Superintendent of Woodville ISD.

The sweetest moment after giving a talk is when the Superintendent connects the information and ideas in your talk to the mission of the school district, connecting it to teachers’ salaried futures (more on that in a moment). It is a rare moment (for me) to have that kind of validation from Superintendent level staff, and I’m grateful I had the chance to experience that.

After sharing on the importance of online learning, changing national/international standards in regards to technology, I listened to the Superintendent when he highlighted the Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN.org) and emphasized how important it was for teachers to get going with this or face losing funding as children stayed home and availed themselves of TxVSN.org courses and home-school. I literally “fell” deeper (in rapture) into my seat as I heard these words, having seen how many larger districts (read disclaimer below lest you jump to conclusions) have chosen to disregard the law in regards to Virtual Schools in Texas. This topic deserves a longer blog post soon.

Moodle really IS a Trojan Horse for bringing online learning into schools, forget that assortment of cloud-based computing tools! Consider this excerpt from an article I wrote some time ago:

…the ability of people with a computer and internet access to publish their ideas at will, and other’s ability to access those ideas–often in spite of network technicians best efforts to stop them–is changing how we work. Yet, access to these technologies in many districts remains a dream. School districts have worked to block our access to these technologies out of fear. Many educators are left trying to pick the “school district” lock that forces them to use only what has been approved by the “curriculum illuminati” in K-12 schools. In stark contrast to these restrictions, Moodle exists as a compromise, a trojan horse of Read/Write Web technologies, a tool to develop engaging professional learning opportunities for adult and K-12 learners. (Source)

In a phone conversation with Wes Fryer (SpeedofCreativity.org) today, reflecting on the challenges we all face as educators in sharing the gospel of connecting/creating/collaborating, it’s clear there is a lot of work to do. One of the challenges, Wes pointed out, was the fear in schools…blocks exist for many technologies.

As I was considering this perspective on how fear holds us back in schools, this quote from a colleague popped up in my email:

In overcoming fear and sharing our stories with others, we find the truth about who we really are—and discover that we’re not alone.

~ Lisa Hammond

I can look back at this morning with hope that, at least in one district “behind the Pine Curtain,” as one district employee put it with some laughter, that the need for change is being acted upon.

Below is my keynote presentation to Woodville ISD, and I’m thrilled I had the chance to share so many positive stories for embracing technology with them.

Update: Ginger Lewman, a colleague out in the edublogosphere, shared this quote that I find particularly relevant to our need to change…

“Our teaching and learning habits are useful but they can also be deadly. They are useful when the conditions in which they work are predictable and stable. They are deadly if and when the bottom falls out of the stable social world in and which for we learn.” Source: Zigmunt Bauman

“You will pay the price for your lack of vision,” utters the Emperor in the final chapter of StarWars, as blue lightning flows from his fingertips. Luke Skywalker has just turned him down, turning down the job of a lifetime–serving as the Emperor’s right-hand man.

Lack of vision? It is a curious choice of words. The established order of things–the status quo–fails when it moves out of alignment with new information and ideas that can improve the situation of those it was meant to serve. Instead of a Republic where freedom flourishes, you have an Empire that empowers wrongdoing, enshrines in nobility the acts which cannot be allowed to continue.

Are you jedi or sith when you step into a classroom, part of your toolkit, the use of social media tools to enhance learning for K-12 and adult learners?

When I began teaching process writing, writing/reading workshop, the other teachers around me treated me with disdain. They criticized the work of my students, though their writing soon covered the walls of my classroom and, later, the walls outside my classroom. What if, I had been stopped, and told, “You may not teaching writing workshop in your classroom?” Would I, a writer myself, have allowed that to be? Or would I have circumvented the rules?

The answer is as clear now as it was then. I would have broken the rules. I choose not to be limited by lack of vision on the part of those who, in spite of their authority and beliefs, say it is wrong. Yet, choosing to go against the status quo is always dangerous…the system fights back, and success is always tinged with a feeling of nausea in the pit of your stomach. Is it worth it? Yes.

Consider this perspective:When you step into the classroom today, you have agreed to work inside a box that others have made. It may not be the box you wish to work in, or you imagined being in, but nevertheless, the pay you have accepted, the contract you signed all serve as reminders that you are an employee…and you do not make the final decisions.

Should you choose to violate the rules under which you have been allowed into that classroom, then you must embrace the consequences as well. If you would use social media tools–blogs, Twitter/Plurk, social bookmarking–to interact with other people outside the classroom, people NOT approved by the school district that first placed its trust in you, then you must prepare for the consequences.

Those consequences could involve being recognized as a leader in the school, a person who will soon find himself on report, if not unemployed, or the expectation that you will work quietly, hoping no one notices what you have done until your students’ voices grow so strong, their parents and your colleagues so enamored of their work that you will have proven The Rules are wrong.

It is a journey fraught with danger. Go ahead and break the rules…just make sure you’re ready to be unemployed. In the meantime, share your learning, the value of social media and the PLN/BRAIN with as many others as you can. Refuse to be silenced, instead making your learning–and the consequences applied to you–as public as possible. Though this may limit your job opportunities in the future, isn’t it safe to say that you’d rather have a job that springboards your learning for the benefit of yourself and others rather than seeks to fit you into a box?

First of all, remember that what we did on Friday was an “Introduction” to Problem Based Learning. It is a bit more involved that just coming up with an emotional “hook” to get students interested. If you understand that learning takes place on a deeper level when there is an emotional attachment to the learning, then you are halfway to understanding how PBL works. However, half way is not all the way.

Pretty nifty…anyways, here are two articles I wrote. The first is TAKS, Technology and Problem-based Learning. I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on PBL, just grateful I had the chance to write and share my limited experiences.

“We’d like to try something different,” John began, “since we’ve already done this type of training before. It would be repetitious to do it the same way, they don’t seem that interested.” I knew exactly what he meant. We’ve all given this type of staff development in the past. Here’s what the day looks like:

1) As a large group, let’s discuss what policy and leadership is.2) Divide up into group and discuss one of the following topics using these web-based resources as sources of information.3) Choose a topic and use some technology tool to develop your response and share it with others.4) And, so it goes on and on….

Problem-based learning, however, provides a different approach you can take. It focuses you on an ill-structured problem. The story, the characters in the story, all come from the experiences of your students and real life. Follow these steps to enhancing professional development through the use of PBL. Even if you don’t adhere to the strict process or flow of problem-based learning, you will have transformed the experience for your adult learners. . .and these days, that can be the difference. The difference between another boring presentation people gulp coffee to stay awake in to a transformative experience.

1) CRAFTING A TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCEWhen working with John, the first step was to map out what it was we wanted our students—all adult learners—to learn. We could have used Inspiration, but John was a bit skeptical about the use of this approach, so we grabbed the nearest whiteboard. We began to write on the board, asking ourselves questions such as,

— What did we really want them to learn?— Why was it important that they learn this?— What problems or issues would they be able to resolve with the information?— What process, if any, did we want them to follow? Was that process governed by policy? Which ones in particular?

As we organized our thoughts on the whiteboard, our next concern was to ensure that the stakeholders were considered. Stakeholders, as you know, include anyone who has a stake in getting a problem resolved. We asked ourselves, “Who is affected by the information we’re sharing, by the solutions that will be developed?” Of course, it’s also important to discuss who will develop the solution. As soon as we finished the mapping, we were ready for the next step of the process.

2) ENGAGING THE LEARNERSMapping the problem had been easy. We were now ready to move into the phase of the process that is problematic for professional development facilitators—writing the engaging narrative, or, the problem. It is challenging since some do not consider themselves good writers, or able to write a ficitional problem that integrates the elements addressed by the graphic organizer in step 1.

“ What you have to remember, John,” I shared, “is that you are not writing a fiction story exactly. You are writing a story that encapsulates the issues, stakeholders in a way that grabs your learners.” From my perspective, the writing of the story problem is the most exciting of all the steps. But, it doesn’t have to be a written problem. You only write it if you lack another medium to use and want to remain consistent. You could use radio, television, video-record yourself or use a skit to introduce the problem elements.

Another important point about the problem engagement, or story, is ensuring that you have a “real life” person affected. That does not mean put someone alive in the story, but to make sure your main character is the one who has to solve the real life problem. Whether it is a principal, a teacher, a parent or student, it should be someone who will best come alive for your adult learners. For a group of principals, the protagonist should be a principal. For a group of parents, it should be a parent or child. You can always shift the focus of the story so long as the key elements that you want them to learn are present.

3) FACILITATING THE PROCESS OF PROBLEM-SOLVINGAfter we had finished mapping the experience we would be working through, and crafting the narrative, I realized that John was still skeptical. He couldn’t see how we were going to move from the map to real life professional development session. “What do I do at the beginning?” he asked.

In traditional professional development, we are so caught up in what happens after the introductions, in setting the stage and sharing what people are going to learn today from us, that we miss the point. Adult learners arrive with one set of expectations, you have another, and sometimes, we are frightened into “getting down to business” that we miss the opportunity. We miss the excitement.To help him understand what his adult learners would be going through, I decided to ease the process of facilitation by modeling the first few moments for him. Modeling the first engagement of the problem was important for John. It enabled him to see the potential energy in the PBL Approach.First, I asked him to read the problem. Then, I asked him the question, “What hunches do you have about this problem?” Hunches are intuitive guesses we have about the problem. They are what we think may occur or be the motivations for some of the stakeholders in the problem story. After we jotted these down on another whiteboard (although you can easily use a word processor, flip chart), we were ready for the next piece. Before moving on, I stepped back out of facilitative role and pointed out that their guesses had hit on the main issues in the problem. This is an important piece because it tells us our story involved us in the manner we hoped it would.The next thing was to write down everything we knew for certain in the problem. For example, you might phrase it this way, “What do we know for certain about the problem?” This is a wonderful approach because, now that we’ve gotten the hunches out of the way, we’re ready to focus in on th problem. No guesses or hunches are allowed. We are strictly “in the text.” These are the facts of the matter and are critical to solving the problem.

After we’ve nailed down the facts, we ask, “What questions can we ask that will get us the information we need to help the protagonist solve the problem?” Of course, one never says protagonist. By this time, everyone is using the protagonist’s first name. A list of questions is produced. An exciting activity, the question generation shows how engaged your audience is. It is often the “proof” that those reluctant to use Problem-based Learning as a staff development technique need to experience to see its efficacy. Before you move on to the final activity, be sure to prioritize—with the group—the most important questions.The final activity in facilitating the problem-solving is to have them identify all the potential stakeholders. This last piece allows them to see the big picture, not just try to solve problems from a narrow point of view. It fosters empathy, and being able to view a problem from multiple perspectives. At the end of this activity, you have a list of potential stakeholders. Using the stakeholders as a guide, divide the class into stakeholder groups. It is from these perspectives that the class will explore the issues.4) ORGANIZING THE RESEARCHA tremendous amount of work was accomplished in the first few hours of professional development. Depending on the length of your problem, the third step of enhancing professional development could have taken 1-4 hours. Now, you will notice the benefits of PBL Approach among your adult learners. Not one of them—honest—is falling asleep. All are self-engaged, almost driven, to solve the difficult, no easy solutions problem that “sprang” from the mapping activity in step 1.Yet, as you move forward, this is the step when you can take advantage of technological tools. You can use treasure hunt or subject sampler type activities (http://www.ozline.com) to organize the resources for your learners. You can take advantage of online resources such as Digital Knowledge Central (the replacement for the Texas Library Connection) with access to research, or a digital video distribution system. Whatever resources—books, newspapers, online—the point is that they have to find the most effective way of doing their research.At this time, you can introduce new techie tools, graphic organizers, information problem-solving strategies (like Big6). Whatever the process is, make sure that your adult learners keep track of what process they are going through. You’ll want to evaluate its effectiveness later.

5) SHARING POSSIBLE SOLUTIONSNow that your adult learners have spent some time doing research, working through the information they needed to develop a possible solution, ask them to share what they have come up with. More importantly, ask them to first develop criteria for what would be an effective solution as a group. Use this criteria to assess the solutions that are brought forth, as well as what process they followed in information problem-solving.This feedback is important for adult learners and allows them to fine-tune the solutions they develop. The wonder of the PBL approach as employed with adult learners is that they will no perceive your workshop as a long, boring exploration of a topic at the periphery of consciousness. They will not sit in your class problem-solving the real life challenges they face, or will encounter, back at their campus. Instead, you will have tapped into their creative energies, engaging them, making them feel as if they, not you, had planned out the experience.Having done both types of professional development, I now find that anything less than PBL is just a transfer of information that may or may not actually become a part of my problem-solving tools. Like my friend John, you may be skeptical of the approach. Go ahead and try it. If you sense a lot more energy in the group, you will know you have tapped into the process.

Several years ago, I embarked on a pilgrimage. Rather than voyage to a far away city or place, I sought out the best constructivist approach for integrating technology into the curriculum. My quest led me to try out telecomputing based activity structures, activity formats such as webquests and subject samplers, information problem-solving approaches, all with an awareness of how technology can transform teaching, learning and leadership. As an education specialist for an Education Service Center, I could be the architect of professional development that transformed the way teachers met new and innovative approaches. More importantly, it was my responsibility to find the “right approach” and bring it back to the 52 districts I served.

The more approaches I encountered and shared, the stronger my awareness grew that they were all connected. I sought out a way to harmonize these approaches, eventually developing a sophisticated concept map showing the relationship between these different approaches and strategies, and the role technology played in each. I called this approach “Writing Technology into the Curriculum” (http://www.mguhlin.net/workshops/images/wticmodel.jpg). Over time, I came to recognize that the Holy Grail of constructivist approaches is problem-based learning.

WHAT IS PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING?Problem-based learning (PBL) uses real-life problems modeled after a contemporary or historical case to engage students as they pursue specified learning outcomes that are in line with academic standards or course objectives (Stepien & Pyke, 1997). Students work through the problem as a stakeholder. The teacher acts as a guide or advisor as students explore the issues involved, formulate questions, conduct research, and consider possible solutions to the problems.

According to Stepien and Pyke (1997), a problem-based learning situation must meet several criteria. The situation must provide an effective way of engaging students with experiences that scaffold higher order thinking. The situation should also accomplish curriculum objectives and include age-appropriate topics. Further, the learning situation should take the form of an ill-structured problem to foster inquiry at a level that is cognitively engaging but not frustrating. Lastly, the situation should make efficient use of instructional time allotted to the unit. You can find out more about problem-based learning online at http://pda.tcea.org.

WHY PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING?Prior to learning about problem-based learning several years ago, I worked with the latest technologies and learned how to introduce them to the adult learners that attended. As time went by, however, I realized that the latest and greatest tools were insufficient. What was missing was a constructivist approach that made technology transparent and necessary, not secondary. In my search for the perfect approach, I had the opportunnity to study project-based learning. Typically, I began to research this approach. In my studies, I “discovered” problem-based learning. At first, I could not distinguish between the two and, worse, which I preferred.

I did not truly understand the difference between project-based learning and problem-based learning until I attended an ASCD conference held in San Antonio, Texas. There, I had the opportunity to listen to William Stepien who outlined problem-based learning, and modelled it. Eureka! By the mid-morning break, I could barely keep my seat. I had to walk outside, call my colleague at ESC-20 and let him know what he was missing. I had found the approach I’d been looking for–PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING.

PBL could be the vehicle for achieving “true” technology integration. But, as I’ve come to understand, many teachers do not know what “true” technology integration looks like. It’s definition is a well-kept secret. Even though it is in plain sight, we do not know what it looks like. I learned that on introducing principals to the LOTI as a framework for observing technology implementation in the classroom.Principals thought that any use of technology was commendable, which made for interesting discussion when you consider that target technology use can be a lot less expensive than Level 1 (e.g. integrated learning systems like SuccessMaker, Plato products, curriculum management systems) and Level 2 (e.g. distance learning centers used at the knowledge and application levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy). At the STaR Chart’s target technology level, or LOTI Level 4, technology is used as a tool to identify and solve real life authentic problems.

WHAT IS TRUE TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION?In various online forums, I have shared my realization that “technology integration” efforts have failed. I began to understand the futility of trying to catch the technology train years ago. Technology was changing too rapidly for anyone–including educators–to keep up. Those technology integration efforts were characterized by using the latest and greatest technologies (e.g. the latest push might be seen as the handheld craze). These technology innovations forced us all to learn the latest and greatest tools, then share them for use in the classroom before authentic uses were discovered. It does not mean that these technologies won’t find a place in the classroom, but that they were pushed out to the masses before their appropriate use was identified.

In “No Child Left Behind,” we see an emphasis on technology literacy. But, what does “technology literacy” mean? How do we define it? As the train slows down again because of funding issues, it is time to look back at all the technologies we tried and discarded (refer to sidebar 1), to begin to use them strategically and systemically.

To do so means to re-evaluate what true technology integration is, and perhaps, to choose to abandon a phrase that means so much it only describes our failure to keep up with the technology train. Technology integration has meant for so long, “technology acquisition and experimentation” at the 2nd Level of Technology Implementation (LOTI). The 2nd Level is characterized by: Greater emphasis on technology rather than critical content.

WHAT IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR?Technology integration, technology literacy, information literacy all boil down to the same common denominator–do students and teachers know how to use technology appropriately, at the point of need in anticipation, or in response, to a real life, authentic problem?And, that is where the challenge lies–not in the appropriate use of the technology, but in the “real life, authenticity” of the problems that may be lacking in some of our schools today. Approaches such as project-based learning, the more rigorous problem-based learning upon which higher-order thinking activities may flow from demand a shift in teaching approach. Now that technology is ubiquitous, it’s not “technology acquisition, experimentation” that needs to take place, but that we must “uncover” the appropriate uses of technology in a problem-based curriculum.

At the TCEA 2003 State Conference’s Professional Development Academy, 71 educators were introduced to Problem-based Learning (http://pda.tcea.org). At the end of the two days, I was surprised at how many educators remained. Perhaps, they believed us when we stated that problem-based learning prepares students for the TAKS. I found myself responding again to teachers in the Professional Development Academy, “You have to trust the process. Once engaged by a real life problem, students will ask the questions needed to solve the problem.”

IS PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING A VALID APPROACH IN TEXAS SCHOOLS?Though the Professional Development Academy organizers and I constantly stated that problem-based learning approach would prepare students for the TAKS, I wanted to verify this with the “curriculum experts” at TEA. While I felt comfortable asserting PBL use in all other content areas, especially after reviewing the resources online at TEA for TAKS, I wanted confirmation from the math expert at the Texas Education Agency (TEA).

You have to understand that math is not my strong point. I was one of those students who always asked, “What’s the purpose of learning the quadratic formula? I’ll never use this again.” The explanations my teachers gave me over the years took too long. I felt like an old-fashioned superintendent must feel when trying to understand the benefits of a network bandwidth upgrade and its connection to voice over IP–”So what? Is this really important?”

“Teaching lessons that require students to relate to problems and contexts that they will encounter in ‘real-life’, says Paula Gustafson, “motivates them to learn more rigorous mathematics content.” What a powerful statement this is. TAKS focuses us, not on breath, but depth.Ms. Gustafson goes on to say:“The agency is encouraging districts to teach students throughout the year using complex lessons that requirestudents to think at high cognitive levels. The inclusion of these lessons, rather than using a “test-prep” resource will increase TAKS scores. The difficulty with TAKS-prep is the alignment of the sample items to the items developed for the real exam. Many teachers are beginning to embrace this type of lesson structure and have been pleased with previous TAAS results.”

WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE?Tom Snyder wrote long ago about an experience he had as a vendor of his computer-based simulations. In presenting to a large group of teachers, he shared that a teacher in the audience raised her hand and asked, “Do you have to be a good teacher to do this in your classroom?” Despite the counseling of the company representative sponsoring his product, Tom Snyder listened to his conscience, and said, “Yes, it requires a very good teacher.”

In my quest for the right approach, I realized that instructional technology had to be about the constructivist approach employed, rather than the technology. Problem-based learning is the apex of constructivist approaches and is definitely appropriate in preparing students for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). The role of the technologist is to accomplish what Ms. Gustafson writes next, “Technology use within these lessons should be seamless. Proficiency with the technology will make a vast difference in the TAKS results received at the district level, and remember we have the mandate for technology in our TEKS from grades K-12.”

THE TAKS-TECHNOLOGY OPPORTUNITYToo many workbooks, not enough real life applications left me with a bad taste in my mouth regarding math. Even as an adult, I sat through inferential statistics feeling like a dummy, since I did not know how to apply any of what I had learned to the case study approach our professor used. Let me phrase that differently: I didn’t learn how to do math in relation to problems and real life contexts. This caused me difficulty in college when I was called upon to solve higher-level math using a case study approach (an approach similar to problem-based learning).

As we move into TAKS, I’m delighted by the opportunity we now have as educators. TAKS may finally give us constructivists the opportunity to shine…and being a firm believer in the idea that professional development for teachers impacts student achievement, I invite you to use problem-based learning in your classroom.

1982: It’s the language that comes with your computer (using BASIC).1986: Use networked systems that individualize instruction and focus on increasing test scores.1988: Word processing-using computers as tools like adults do.1990: Integrate the computers with the existing curriculum through the use of history databases, science simulations and probes1992: Change the curriculum–students learn best by creating products for an audience1994: Use email to allow students to be part of the real world.1996: Use computers to publish student work to a world-wide audience via the WWW

Statewide education advocacy group, Raise Your Hand Texas, launches a new look for educators, legislators, parents, and concerned citizens. Along with tightening it’s focus on supporting the more than 4.8 million students in the Texas public education system, Raise Your Hand Texas has extended into the online community with newly created website and interactive social media presence.

San Antonio, TX July 20, 2009 — Raise Your Hand Texas, whose focus is the 4.8 million students in the Texas public education system, seeks to increase awareness and participation within the business sector, amongst educators, parents, and concerned citizens, to see students reach the ultimate goal of graduation.

Raise Your Hand Texas believes firmly in a strong early education foundation for future success. Participating in high-quality pre-kindergarten increases high school graduation rates by as much as 44 percent. Staring at zero members in its inception in 2007, Raise Your Hand Texas is now 25,000 members strong and growing.

Kara Johnson, CEO and President of the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition had this to say about the importance of early learning,

“The first 5 years of a child’s life are absolutely critical in terms of brain development. Literally developing a foundation for success in school and life for that child.”

She elaborated further by sharing how early childhood education can have a lasting impact,

“…children at this age learn through play and exposure to different things such as touch sound words feelings impressions. So, if engaged properly children will experience a dramatic increase in their vocabulary, they’ll be better able to regulate their emotions, develop confidence, as well as create positive relationships in early childhood and take that into adulthood”

Raise Your Hand Texas believes that every child deserves a quality education. We support high standards and expectations, along with securing the financial resources and tools to increase student performance.

Through online community interactions via newly launched social engagement platforms and an informative website, Raise Your Hand Texas looks to continue it’s mission to inform, educate, and create awareness for Texas public education.

About Raise Your Hand Texas:

Raise Your Hand Texas is a non-profit, bi-partisan advocacy organization made up of business and community leaders, taxpayers and concerned citizens, all with a single focus: supporting the more than 4.8 million students in the Texas public education system.

Can open education and the corporate interests that control mainstream Web 2.0 co-exist? What does "open educational technology" look like, and does it stand for anything? Do higher education institutions dare seize a mission of public service in fostering an open web worthy of the name? Can ambition and idealism prevail in an age of economic austerity? Finally, what is the role of the open educational technologist—that is, the "open ed tech"?2

a pedagogy that mirrors the participatory narratives of social media, or of a "personal cyberinfrastrucure," dramatically transforming the relationship between learner and learning environment.7

Having signed up for a Gmail account, a user can publish websites with Blogger, manage groups and mailing lists with Google Groups, videoconference with Google Talk, write collaboratively with Google Docs, track topics with Google Alerts, manage syndicated feeds with Google Reader, share video with YouTube, post images with Picassa, and do whatever it is that Google Wave is supposed to do. We need not belabor the power and popularity of services such as Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. All this incredible functionality is delivered in remarkably stable and user-friendly environments, and it’s available free of charge!

Online educational content and activity is increasingly moving to corporate-owned spaces, whether through individual choice or across the enterprise via cloud computing and services such as Google Apps for Education or Apple’s iTunesU.

a couple of embittered Gen-X’ers

look at the commodification of online educational environments with distaste.

As Steve Greenberg has stated: "You are not Facebook’s customer. You are the product that they sell to their real customers—advertisers. Forget this at your peril."

To use these tools is to reinforce, however indirectly, the "advertised life," the incursion of commoditization ever deeper into human thought and interaction. The question is whether there is a role for higher education to promote "safe spaces" free of this influence.

Rather, our question is whether IT staff in academic environments might not aspire to a vital mission: to being something more than consumers and cheerleaders for commercial products.

There are too many heroes in this domain to list here, but we offer a shout-out to the jaw-dropping CUNY Academic Commons (http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/), which seamlessly integrates the open-source WordPress, MediaWiki, and BuddyPress platforms into an appealing and highly sustainable environment. The power placed into the hands of the users reflects the stated intent of Luke Waltzer, administrator of the CUNY platform Blogs@Baruch, "to gradually integrate into the school’s general education curriculum the deep, critical examination of how digital tools are changing the way we think and live."

We dream of higher education that embraces its role as a guardian of knowledge, that energetically creates and zealously protects publicly-minded spaces promoting enlightenment and the exchange of ideas. We need green spaces for conviviality on the web.2

Next to me in a workshop we were both attending, a technology-enabled classroom teacher pulled out her Clear USB thingamajig (granting her unfiltered access to the Web), plugged it into her personal netbook, and proceeded to get on about the work of the workshop. As she texted on her HTC Incredible phone running Android OS, I couldn’t help but marvel at her technology prowess. Can you note which actions were in violation of school district policy?

1) Using unfiltered Internet access.2) Connecting a personal laptop to the District network without appropriate forms on file.3) Using a personal mobile device during work hours (ok, ok, she was on her own time but such habits are not lightly set aside!).

As Richard Byrne (Free Technology for Teachers) points out, there are various ways to respond to this real life scenario. He describes it in this way, which certainly caught my attention as a watcher of MASH from the time I was a child:

The first five seasons of the hit television series M.A.S.H. featured two characters that exemplify the two ways that teachers generally respond to school policies that don’t make good instructional sense. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce (from a fictitious town in Maine) known as Hawkeye is a brash surgeon who often finds himself in hot water because of his “it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission” attitude. The thing about Hawkeye is he’s good and he knows it!

When he saw an Army policy that stood in the way of giving his patients the best possible care, he just ignored the policy so that he could give his patients the best possible care. The polar opposite of Hawkeye was his tent-mate Frank Burns. Burns was an Army man through and through. For Burns following Army policy was always job number one even if it meant that following policy stood in the way of giving his patients the best possible care.

We can probably summarize these approaches quite simply as 1) The Practical Approach and 2) the Legalistic Approach. George Lakoff, author of “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” uses the concept of frames to describe how our worldview impacts our behavior (e.g. Strict Father vs Nurturing Parent).

As Richard points out in his guest blog entry on Wes Fryer’s Moving at the Speed of Creativity blog, you have to be focused on delivering “the best possible learning experience for your students.” Social media tools, of course, are under fire in today’s schools. We wouldn’t care except our collective gut as teachers tells us they SHOULDN’T be since they enable powerful learning experiences for our children.

The problem with organizations, social media and the idea of control is that organizations are focusing on controlling access to social media. They act as though their company-owned computers are the only way an employee can get online…Controlling access to social media is increasingly becoming a fool’s game–a waste of time and effort. And it’s not only a waste of YOUR time, but a waste for workers, too. If 22 years of parenting have taught me nothing else, it’s that the greatest goad to human ingenuity is telling someone “you can’t do that.” Considerable time and creativity will be expended in proving you wrong.

When I asked the young lady wielding personal technology in the service of education, she stated, “I’m not going to wait for the District to grant me access to web sites that would benefit my students.” This “get ‘er done” attitude has always appealed to me…a “goad to human ingenuity” for this teacher. If I were her principal, I’d want her on my team!

As a classroom teacher, and later as the campus technology coordinator and Instructional Specialist (Reading/ELA/Technology focus), I remember thinking and saying, “Our campus needs this now…why should we wait for the District?” In the intervening years, it would be hard to imagine that technology would evolve from wired access to free and/or commercially available wireless access that any teacher could carry around in their purse or pocket.

As a technology administrator, I have to ask myself, which kind of leader will I be? And, does it have to be defined by such stark opposites, such as Hawkeye and Burns, nurturing parent or strict father?

As I approach middle age, I’m leaning towards a different, transcendental approach than the two roads diverging here. Maybe, the approach is symbolized by the character on MASH played by Harry Morgan–Colonel Sherman Tecumseh Potter. Wikipedia describes him in this way:

Col. Potter was a talented leader and surgeon. He led mainly by example, always doing his best and encouraging others to do the same. He was at times willing to ignore the letter of regulations in order to abide by their spirit. Easygoing by nature, Potter understood the realities of life in a MASH unit, and the need for jokes, pranks and recreation to boost morale (occasionally joining in with the tomfoolery himself). When he found out about Hawkeye and B.J.’s gin distillery, he offered advice on how to improve its yield, explaining that he had such a still while stationed on Guam during World War II; he even stated that he had received a Purple Heart as a result of the still exploding in his face.

In that spirit, I might have said to the young teacher, “You know, you can use PDAnet to tether your phone to your computer, giving you access to the Internet without using Clear. That might save you some money.” Yes, I guess I’d rather be a Col. Potter. But such wisdom comes at a price and having to put up with folks that want to be one thing or another no matter the cost to learners, K-12 or adult.

Maybe my preference for Potter comes from my Dad, who appreciated him from his perspective.

“How are you getting access to YouTube?” asked a teacher at a workshop I was facilitating in a small rural school district, beads of sweat forming on her upper lip. I felt the heat, too, already having shed my tie earlier one summer day in a school where the chairs were up on desks and classrooms shuttered against trespass. “Our district usually blocks access.”

“Oh,” I replied casually, “I’m using my Android phone to access the Web via 3G speed.” My eyes carefully scanned the room, wondering if anyone else had noticed my illegal use of a mobile device to bypass the District’s content filtering…yes, I’d been spotted. The technology specialist headed my way. I timed the delivery of my question to coincide with her arrival. “Would you like me to show you how to tether your Android phone to your computer?”

“Smartphone wave challenges enterprise security” is the title of one article (by Ellen Messmer) in the August 9, 2010 issue of NetworkWorld magazine. The question they are asking is, “how will the enterprise prepare to exert management and security controls in a multi-operating system smartphone enviornment, or figure out how to secure data on a device that the employee, not the enterprise, officially owns?”

A few minutes later, I found myself giving an impromptu session on PDAnet, an Android phone app that works for free on sites (not HTTPS though), or if you pay the $20, one-time software registration fee, works unrestricted on Mac and Windows computers. The technology specialists in the room, including the one classroom teacher who wielded a newly purchased Android phone, listened attentively. In this one act play, I had shifted the power to access the Web back into teachers’ hands. Was I the hero or villain?

Whatever the label, many educators–including myself–find the cost of paying for a mobile wireless card (like those available from AT&T, Spring, Verizon) to be exorbitant. Even Clear, which boasts sub-$30 fees per month for 3G/4G speeds, can add up. But why can’t you use your Android phone with PDAnet to get the job done?

SMARTPHONES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

If you’re like me, you probably use your phone quite a bit when on the go. But did you know that 40% of American adults use their cell phones to surf the Web, e-mail, or use instant messaging, according to a study from Pew Research Center in Washington? More research found the following (Source for this information):

Overall, 59 percent of adults in the U.S. go online wirelessly, via Wi-Fi or mobile connections, on cell phones and laptops, up from 51 percent a year ago, according to the Pew report. Among all cell-phone owners, 54 percent used their devices to send photos and videos, 23 percent accessed a social networking site, and 11 percent made a purchase.

But working off a small screen and keyboard (if that) can be a bit of a pain for grown-ups. As a result, some are turning to Apple iPads with 3G to get things done…but there are some who just want to combine their “low-cost” smartphone with a netbook to connect to the Internet. Tethering your phone can be the best way to achieve that, as can taking advantage of other services.

HOW TO BE A HERO…OR VILLAIN

With everyone headed back to school, I’m wondering if you’re ready to bypass District policy in regards to social media and Internet connectivity? Consider that school districts are spending millions on protecting children and sheltering staff from salacious and sinister sites. Unfortunately, some of those sites include web sites with instructional resources you just have to have.

If you are one of those teachers that won’t take “No” for an answer (read the previous blog entry), then you have several routes:

Tether Your iPhone – Check out Reason #1 from Steve Dembo. Although be careful about that 2gig limit on data transfers may cripple you on AT&T’s network (bias: I don’t like AT&T as a result of my experiences with them and my opinion of those services).

Purchase Clear.com Wireless or some similar service through AT&T, Verizon, etc.

The best approach? Tether your Android phone. No bias here, of course, since I own one (smile).

In a recent blog entry, Learning for Relevancy, Daniel Rezac (Adventures in EdTech) starts out with some simple statements of belief…do these resonate with you while at the same time making you feel a) connected with your place of work and the culture that supports you; b) disconnected with your workplace and making you ask “Why am I here?” or c) Ready to embrace revolution in your school system and others?

Your reaction may be a telling indicator of your beliefs about teaching, learning and leading in a technology-rich environment.

Dan Rezac’s beliefs about learning:

I believe you are more likely to engage and create a future scientist when you use the tools of the period and you make their learning authentic with what’s happening in the world at present.

I believe it’s a teacher’s responsibility to teach their students using the relevant platforms of the modern era.

I believe that teaching a student how to access information from the Internet is relevant to living in the 21st century.

I believe that art and music teachers have the responsibility to empower student artists with technology to be creators and sharers of their works, and to responsibly show them how to share those works with an online audience.

I believe it is the responsibility of every teacher to use all means necessary, including technology, to reach all learners, whether joined by diversity, ethnicity, or special needs.

I believe a 21st century teacher:

should know how to communicate using email.

should know how to use collaborative online tools.

should know how to do research (access information) using the Internet.

should know how to create a “learning stream” for themselves using Online tools to keep themselves abreast of new strategies and tools in their field.

I believe it’s the responsibility of a school district to offer an environment that allows veteran teachers to improve their teaching skills, to embrace the modern tools of the classroom.

I believe an excellent teacher seeks out new knowledge and prepares themselves for their students with the most up-to-date methods, strategies, and information related to their domain.

It’s really all about engagement, empowerment, using current tools, be lifelong learners in Dan’s beliefs, whether you are a student or teacher. I can feel the enthusiasm just coming off the “digital page.”

As I meditate on these beliefs, it occurs to me that each of these beliefs could take a lifetime of learning to actualize in one’s own life and in the classroom. What happens if we don’t share Dan’s beliefs? What do these beliefs actually mean in practice, and is adherence to these beliefs sufficient to over-turn centuries old approaches to teaching and learning?

Shouldn’t beliefs like these–that impact teaching, learning and leading–be grounded in research of some kind? Isn’t that the kind of question that we should ask as professionals?

While being able to use collaborative online tools is nice to know, how is it relevant to school district curriculum and what the State’s essential skills say students should be learning? How is knowing how to be collaborative online going to improve test scores? Where is the definitive series of research studies that proves that?

What about these “research-based” assertions, worded as belief statements?

We could probably play that game all day, huh? After all, it’s not that hard. Find the research, formulate a belief statement and see what happens. But aren’t school environments and leaders’ lack of vision to create technology-empowered learning spaces (online or face to face) the real problem?

Either they are coming out of teacher preparation programs unprepared to integrate technology effectively, or they’re entering a school environment where they’re not encouraged to do so.

…frequent technology use is associated with greater emphasis on and perceived benefits of 21st-century skills.

While many of us are speaking about how important the 21st Century skills are, it’s clear we still haven’t quite mastered the “20th century” skills. As Dan Pink points out, those are still very much needed, just insufficient (although some folks don’t even agree with Pink on the necessity!). In this Instructional Design podcast, Shanna Smith-Jaggars challenges online learning findings from Dept. of Education.

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” Shanna Smith-Jaggars, Senior Research Associate at the Community Colleges Research Center challenges this assertion in her response to the meta-analysis (July 2010). Jaggars more fully explores the comparison of online and face-to-face instruction and finds only 7 studies out of 51 can be used to shed light on this question. Of these 7, Jaggars concludes that there is no significant difference between learning outcome achievement in face-to-face or online courses for certain student populations.

As Jaggars puts it in this interesting interview, “what we really need to be doing is spending more time and effort in trying to figure out what are the most effective instructional practices in both modalities”.

Does our education system support people like Dan who have these kinds of beliefs, or does it work against them, trying to use them as instruments of indoctrination?

Excellence is achieved through individual mastery, a collegial network awash with inquiry and creativity, undergirded by trust and tangible support from the larger community. (Peter Henry as cited in GenYes!)

Of course, isn’t it true that people are perhaps a bit carried away with technology? Should every student be blogging their learning, or is blogging just one of those interchangeable terms for reflective writing?

Blogging is a crucial 21st literacy skill. Why?…

It creates a personal identity/digital brand/footprint. Blogging puts on view, who we are, what we have been involved in, how we think, what we like, our skills, what we have created, it is our online advertising etc (Source: On an e-journey with Generation Y)

Is it, really? I’ve certainly found blogging useful, and I realize that keeping a paper or electronic journal just wouldn’t have done the trick…the trick is that what I blog about actually gets shared with a worldwide audience and they sometimes, if I’m fortunate, write back. But when everyone can comment on your work, does the value endure or is it just a fad?

Ever do your best to inform/engage participants, only to find they walk away unconvinced of the need to take action? If you’re a technology director, I bet that experience is not unfamiliar to you. In fact, the failure of people to act on the advice, or at the suggestion of, educational technologists is not just commonplace workplace reality, it is legendary. Is it because you’re “stupid,” or is it because they are, or both?

Gather a group of edtech advocates, and it won’t be long after you wade through the latest tools, gadgets, Twitterfinds and ecards that you’ll hear the stories of how hard it can be to getting schools moving in the right direction.

…there are two aspects of this issue that haven’t been addressed — the ways in which we invite students to be academics and our own pedagogical styles, both in relation to technology. For the first, I find the suggestion that students not use the internet during our classes or outside of class to be ridiculous, as it is our responsibility to teach them how to use it productively, ethically, and responsibly for many purposes, not the least of which is communicating with us, engaging in research, and creating digital texts. For the second, I think that we all have a responsibility to think about the ways that we ask, even encourage students to use technology in our classrooms, above and beyond simply taking notes.

Is it that people don’t know how to use technology or that they make a decision to avoid learning to use it, including banning it among students, for as long as possible? When do we collectively laugh about our own choices…after the children rebel and are “gone?”

Principals just don’t get it. I always shudder when I hear anyone say that someone else doesn’t “get it.” Why might a person, “not get” something that seems obvious to the one expressing frustration?…Here is what I think is more likely – most administrators “get it” just fine – they just have a different reality that makes our “it” less important to them than it is to us…Please stop saying, “They just don’t get it.” It may reflect on your lack of empathy and understanding, not your principal’s.

Maybe, a better approach would be to say to those that “don’t get it” they are causing the Organization pain as a result of unused potential (Interesting perspective here from Dan). And, the pain of a K-12 organization affects children, adults, the Community, the Workforce, and the Nation. As a learning advocate, when people fail to use technology to engage, enhance learning opportunities for K-12 and adult learners…well, that causes ME pain in frustration, aggravation. How about you? And, from those feelings of pain, flow the move to judgement.

When I read that, I felt a bit chastised. It IS easier to think that folks in leadership positions just fail to understand. In fact, as a leader and school administrator, I’ve been there–“I just don’t understand, explain it again to me in simpler terms.” Reflective listening works great in this situation, too. Yet, sometimes, you know you’ve done your best at communicating, the message was acknowledged, but nothing happened. Those are the situations when it is frustrating to be in EdTech, isn’t it?

If my district is to embrace fully-online learning environments (or even blended courses- interesting commentary on that in this post) at some point in the future, you can bet that we’ll do so after careful consideration and study. Again- I’m pretty sure this is a quality control issue that no one wants to fail. However, I doubt it is any more of a serious quality control issue than it is in purely face to face classrooms. Perceptions of strange new things tend to be far scarier than the familiar.

Here’s one thing I know, as a district we can sit the bench and ultimately swallow the future options that arise from the state level or worse… or we can get really smart and make our own breaks on the local level. The way I see it, we’re on a pretty steep peak when it comes to things like this. Moving a certain amount of “schooling” into completely online formats will either be a really powerful thing, or a really big fail. I doubt there will be much room for “meh.” When new ventures begin with such a strong level of skepticism, it’s easy for folks to call for scrubbing the mission before the messiest parts have even subsided. And when the futures of children are at stake, it is tough to be skeptical of the skeptics.

When that happens to me, I ask “How could I communicate better to help them understand that this is a critical issue for our organization?” The truth is, of course, that sometimes you’re communicating just fine…and the other person is “receiving” great. It’s just the priorities haven’t changed. How do you shift priorities? That’s why I like the Shifting Our Schools into the Digital Age podcast, although it hasn’t been updated recently.

This “They don’t get it” came to mind when I read this blog entry on willful blindness, or as I term it, “willful ignorance,” a euphemism that I use in lieu of “stupid.” In my house, if you’re willfully ignorant–as opposed to plain ignorant–you are stupid. Plain and simple. A willfully ignorant person KNOWS that there is another way but decides not to do anything about it. We have a rule–you can be ignorant, but you better not be willfully so. One is an information problem, while the other is an attitude problem.

Now, we are all willfully ignorant in one (or many) way or another. For example, if i don’t change my diet, I’ll develop XYZ condition. If I don’t fundamentally transform my attitude about this or that, then I’ll miss opportunities that will ultimately improve my situation or catapult me into a new enlightened state of well-being. I feel safe in sharing about my diet with you because I just lost 10 pounds and have been swimming every day (except Mondays and sick days) for the last two months. But there are many other changes I can make that I’m “willfully ignorant” about.

School administrators who continue to merely tweak the status quo and somehow think that they and their school organizations are doing just fine.It’s not like by now principals and superintendents don’t know that the world has changed… Even those non-technology, mainstream leadership conferences like AASA, NASSP, NAESP, and ASCD are beginning to invite us techie folks to speak.

…it’s one thing to ignore the presenter on the stage. It’s another to ignore the evidence before their own eyes. All administrators have to do is LOOK AROUND and they can see the changes in their students. In society at large. In the many institutions that are dying in the face of these transformative technologies.

There’s a concept in the law known as willful blindness. The idea is that one deliberately takes steps to avoid seeing what’s right in one’s face.

Willful ignorance or willful blindness, it’s all the same thing, isn’t it? When I fail to adopt a new approach when it’s the best approach in light of proven information, I’m choosing to be stupid. It’s not name-calling, it’s a simple fact, right?

While there are some things we’re all ignorant on–due to time, energy–we’ll never know about it unless we get out there and start learning (Build Your PLN or BRAIN). If you learn about it but set it aside on purpose when it’s all around you, that’s a bit of a problem, isn’t it?

When attending Abydos (f.k.a. New Jersey Writing Project) Summer Writing Institute earlier this, well, summer, I found myself wondering if the Abydos folks knew about the technology. The answer is, “Yes.” When I read their book, ACTS OF TEACHING (quite good), I realized they had incorporated all sorts of relevant materials, citing Dan Pink and others about how the world has changed.

Yet, the Writing Institute itself was essentially DEVOID of technology, and if you used technology, it was difficult to do some of the activities (the ones that involved highlighting, etc). That’s not because there was no technology equivalent (e.g. Diigo highlighting/social bookmarking) but because it just had not been conceptualized, understood and incorporated into the Institute.

That said, anyone who could put all that awesome stuff together, show success year after year, make me want to earnestly participate, drink the kool-aid, has to be smart enough. They’re not willfully ignorant, they want to find a way to blend in the technology so that technology uses will be as successfully implemented as the non-technology approaches have been.

Last week, one of my team members asked me, “How’s your Moodle course coming along?” At that question, I had to pause. In the first place, I was grateful someone cared enough to ask me a question about my work. In the second, I felt terrible because I hadn’t made much progress on it since starting it. Admittedly, I’ve been a trifle busy the last few weeks, but isn’t that the way it always is?

“You know,” I replied, “a previous team member spoiled me for developing content alone. I could sit for hours working by myself, but now I feel a bit at a loss without someone to bounce ideas off of. Maybe we can bring everyone together and brainstorm ideas and chat about the possibilities.” At that, we ended the conversation with a promise to schedule a meeting with all the team to go over Moodle course development.

That feeling of trying to create alone, especially a course you’re going to teach other people, is tough to overcome. When I think back on it, many of the courses I developed that were worth something had a collaborator. In my work at the Education Service Center, Region 20, Jim Baldoni and I often cranked out courses together. The synergy between two minds kept us going. As a director, I’d forgotten the power of collaboration to create, instead trying to create situations that promote authorship, as Bolman and Deal would say.

Discovering my own power to create is, as I recall Dan Pink in “A Whole New Mind” although quoted out of context, is insufficient. Creativity has to be a team sport, and it has to go beyond the people around you. Yet, I continue to find it hard.

How about you?

“Innovation is a team sport, not a solo sport. It depends on a culture of openness”.

–James Mcnerney, CEO, Boeing Co

Reflecting on the image at the top of this blog post, creating on your own can signal a lack of commitment, an unwillingness to throw one’s ideas on the table and mix it up, to share defeat or victory…probably more of the former than the latter. But if we aren’t willing to risk it as educators, why should our students?

What if we acknowledge that we can achieve more together than alone? More collaboration by reaching outside of our offices and/or classrooms to others? It seems obvious but the doing is hard. You have to change a culture that is focused on being closed and safe. That’s what the big change is, isn’t it? Open=Safe now. . .the more you connect and collaborate, the better. The more closed you are, the greater the risk what you come up with won’t matter or be relevant.

Argh, that’s what so tough. All this seems obvious when reflecting here, but accomplishing it can be difficult because you’re dealing with the confines of the box. As Seth Godin put it so eloquently:

When you think outside the box, what you’re actually doing is questioning the decision before the decision.

That decision is far more important and much more difficult to change than the decision you actually believe you’re about to make. (Source: Seth Godin)

Nothing happens unless you speak up, until you open up. Stay closed, you have the safety of illusion and no hope of starting the dialogue to open things up.

TEA has planned a special back-to-school event that all districts and open-enrollment charters are invited to attend. On Wednesday, August 18th, at 10:00 a.m. CST, TEA and the New York Times will host a webcast featuring Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat.

In his book, Mr. Friedman discusses how technology instantly and seamlessly connects people from across the globe and what this means for countries, communities, and individuals. He also explores what this connectivity means for education. During the webcast, Mr. Friedman will discuss the endless possibilities for educators and students as learning reaches beyond the four walls of the traditional classroom. Mr. Friedman will also answer questions from Texas educators.

To prepare for the webcast, each district is asked to reply to the RSVP posted on the Project Share website (http://www.projectsharetexas.org) and begin making plans to gather teachers in common areas such as auditoriums, cafeterias, and libraries to view the webcast.

Earlier today, I had the opportunity to chat with Ian David Wild, author of Moodle Course Conversion and Moodle 1.9 Math. In spite of some fascinating Skype obstacles–mostly on Ian’s end, so they were resolved quickly–we managed to connect for about an hour conversation.

This wide-ranging conversation touched on many of the initiatives Ian’s been involved with over the last few years, and I’m afraid we barely touched on a subject of great interest to many listeners–Moodle and Mathematics instruction online. For that, we’ve agreed to have a later conversation. For that, I’m hoping the EdTechTalk or Classroom 2.0 LIVE folks will be willing to help out so we can encourage math educators and moodle enthusiasts to join the conversation live. And, no, I haven’t even asked either group if they’d be interested.

There are a variety of remarks that resonate throughout the conversation, including ones such as “Engage early and engage often,” and how Moodle can be used to protect student data (as opposed to the “puffy cloud” that gets blown away…I hope Dan Rezac is reading! (smile)).

Jump in and listen!

On a podcast hosting note, Diana Benner has decided to step out of being Moodle Mayhem podcast co-host! While I’m not sure how long her absence may be, and look forward to welcoming her back, it occurs to me that it would be fun to bring on various Moodle Mayhem members to future podcasts so that we can all get a chance to meet!

So, here goes the announcement of a Moodle Mayhem Co-Host Round up!

Moodle Co-Host Roundup – Looking for a High School Math Teacher Using Moodle. If you would like to be the co-host, please send me an email at “mguhlin@gmail.com” letting me know what your experiences are. Co-host duties include:

1) Sharing how they use Moodle with others on the podcast2) Preparing for the podcast interview with the guest(s)3) Having fun!

Exact Learning Harvest Road Hive: HarvestRoad Hive is ideally suited for content delivery to large communities of users, whether within your organization or dispersed around the world. It offers high availability and load balancing capabilities to ensure 24/7 operation. The product line includes integration with leading Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle, Blackboard (Learn and Vista) and Sakai, which allow content to be delivered from the repository directly into the learning experience. These features enable Hive to underpin independent delivery of learning content while at the same time giving the organization an enterprise-ready repository for all of its business content. (Source)

In North Wales I was involved in the rollout of a network of Moodles to schools, colleges and work-based learning organisations. I’ve also been providing the training for “CLEO” – Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online – approximately 1000 K-12 schools… which also includes Mary Cooch’s school! For Synergy Learning (that’s the Moodle partner part-owned by “Moodle Administration” author Alex Buchner) I’ve also been involved in fascinating work for organisations as diverse as the Ordnance Survey (a government organisation that produces maps for military purposes), the Royal College of General Practitioners (medical doctors receiving, and being tested on, their 5-yearly “Essential Knowledge Updates” in Moodle) and, most recently, cascading essential updates using Moodle to government-funded lawyers via the UK’s Legal Services Commission. I’ve also been involved in a pilot project for the National Health Service (NHS) that is supporting moving face-to-face university medical training online using Moodle.

Again in school: Birmingham City Council – who are the largest local authority in the UK (bigger than London, in fact) are rolling out Moodles to all K-12 schools (starting with about 400 “junior” schools – right now I can’t remember how many “senior” schools!). In Birmingham we also have a city-wide document management system – called “The Hive” and rather like the Alfresco DMS that Julian Ridden was describing in his second podcast – that is fully integrated into Moodle. The Hive means teachers can share resources and best practice across the entire city. In the UK it’s a unique and fantastic project.

At the moment I am working for Nord Anglia Education. We are implementing an international network of 10 Moodles (I’m the senior architect working with a great team of guys here in the UK). Regarding international collaboration, there are lots of issues regarding data protection and the legal issues involved with hosting and transporting children’s data across international borders that I could tell everyone about. E.g. why you have to be careful with children putting their work into GoogleDocs when Google can’t actually guarantee where in the world that data is stored!

oh… and, when I get the chance (which isn’t very often these days!), I also teach math – and, of course, use Moodle to support my math teaching.

You can see that my Moodle background is very diverse and I’ve been very lucky to be involved in some facinating projects. I don’t know if any of this would be relevant and/or interesting to your audience.

This morning, I found myself getting ready to start a Skype conversation…then I realized, “Oh heck, I’m on UbuntuLinux! I haven’t a clue how to record a conversation on Ubuntu Linux on the latest version!” (I’d previously discovered how to do so and blogged it…David Thornburg even read that blog entry!)

The second link, though, was pure gold, albeit in Spanish. Fortunately, I am a fluent Spanish speaker/reader, so that wasn’t much of an impediment (you can also use GoogleTranslate to change it to whatever language you need)! Here’s the solution:

To activate Skype Call Recorder, I had to set up a custom application launcher, or at the command line, type “skype-call-recorder” to start it up.

Skype Call RecorderOnce it’s running, you’ll see it appear in the top right hand corner of your screen in the panel:

Then, if you click on the folder with a Skype logo on it (far left icon shown above), you’ll get the Skype Call Recorder preferences (here are some of the screens):

As you can see, the preferences aren’t that hard to get. To test the recording, I went to the panel icon and selected “Browse previous calls,” which fetched up a window on my hard drive with the saved calls.

I made contact with Skype Test Call and recording came through without problem!

An anonymous comment found its way into my inbox, which seemed out of line given the topic originally written about. The blog entry the comment was offering ideas on was not mine, but it did cause me to read the original blog entry by Stephen Downes a bit more closely.

At the bottom of that blog entry was this bit of wisdom, which I found to resonate so strongly with my perspective that I quote it below:

You know, in life, you have certain kinds of regrets. One kind of regret revolves around the opportunities you never had – what if I had had better schools, better teachers, better jobs, better finances. What if I had been treated fairly here, rewarded justly there, shown this in that place. Things I could never be, places I could never go. These are regrets over things I cannot control. But the other kind of regret – ah. The regret of a man who was not true to himself, who did not give his all, who held himself back or conformed for the sake of advancement, of the man who stopped seeking because he was told what to believe: these are the regrets I could not bear to feel.

I guess I had a choice, back in 1990, about which kind of regret I would feel 20 years later. I do not, for an instant, think I made the wrong choice.

Better to have no regrets…I find them a waste of time worrying about what might have been done, what might have been. Learn the lesson and move on. Yet, regrets worm their way into one’s heart, eating away at who we are and what we hoped to accomplish. My advice for my children is to make mistakes learning (a la Martin Luther’s “Sin boldly!” as interpreted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer) but none you’ll regret in your old age because they compromised who you were, your integrity, honesty with yourself.

From now on, I may just pass on this passage from Stephen’s blog entry. Thanks!

CCleaner is one of my favorite programs for Windows. Although rivalled by Revo Uninstaller in features, CCleaner is easy to use and just seems to work. I’ve abandoned some of my other favorite Registry Cleaners, uninstallers, and temp file removers on Windows. CCleaner also features privacy protection! If you don’t have it on your Windows PC, then you’re machine is not running as well as it could.

Thanks to this series of Plurk exchanges with DMantz7, I decided to take a few moments and see if I could get Chrome OS running via Virtual Box, which allows you to run any operating system on any computer you want (e.g. Mac, Windows, GNU/Linux). In this particular case, I’m using UbuntuLinux 10.04, so that’s what I’m trying out now. Dmantz is more interested in running it on his Macbook Pro.

Perhaps we’ve all become a bit inured to the fact that so-called Web 2.0 services can disappear at will. I won’t bother going into the list (where is that darn list anyways?). The fact is, Edublogs.tv–organizers of Edublogs.org–have taken their service offline…indefinitely with little notice to anyone in the hope of improvement.

Unfortunately, as drmike described, Edublogs.tv was taken offline. We’re working on a new and improved version which should be available at the end of this year or beginning of next (sooner if we can). It would be a good idea to upload any videos you need access to on a different hosting site for the time being. We definitely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I agree with hharvey… I had embedded my videos into websites and wikis, but do not have a list of all the videos. If we could somehow log back into our account and at least recapture them? Especially since I don’t have the originals any longer.

Pretty sad. A free service goes offline and the organizers don’t bother to tell anyone until someone complains. What a disappointing turn of events.

Frustrated with the lifeless prose from my eleventh grade class and thrashing around for a way to combat my students’ ennui, I pulled out of my briefcase a messy cover letter for a summer job that I had begun to draft. I’d put off revising it and had thought of abandoning it altogether. But I reasoned that if I showed my students this draft as something I’d worked on and struggled with, they could get a sense of some real-world writing in process. It would be embarrassing, of course, to reveal my awkward prose, but at the moment, I was willing to try anything.

Peter Elbow’s ideas for responding to writing, featured in his book Writing Without Teachers (1998b) and other texts. He advances the notion that the main function of response should not be peer editing, but rather audience reaction.

This idea seemed to speak to the real-world writing strengths and needs of my students.

Denny Wolfe and M. Lee Manning’s articulation of this process: “Often, classroom-based research demands nothing more than a) being more attentive to what students are doing and how they’re doing it; b) recording our observations; c) trying to make sense of our recordings; and d) making adjustments” (1997)

Elbow’s basic response-group structure

Over a semester,2 writers share a piece of writing they wish to improve with a group of six or more of their peers. The piece may be new or it may be one the writer is revising. Each author brings in enough copies of the work-in-progress for everyone in the group. He or she reads it to the group at least twice. During the readings, the audience members write their reactions to the piece. When everyone has had a chance to react in writing, the group begins to respond aloud to the author, who listens and takes notes. When one piece is finished, a process that takes about 15–20 minutes, the group moves on to the next author and the next round of responses. While Elbow’s writers focus on a single piece, in my classes, each writer produces five or more pieces, which circulate through the groups as drafts and later as revisions.

Many students were comfortable composing on computers and printing multiple copies. I also gave time to photocopy handwritten drafts in the library.

What makes Elbow’s response groups more effective than some other models for response is the kind of response the audience gives

Students give detailed retellings of what they thought, remembered, saw, or did as they read the words.

The response groups give writers a real live audience who tell the truth about what they liked and why.

I knew that I wasn’t the best writer in the world, but I knew what I didn’t understand, and what wasn’t entertaining, and that it was my own opinion. So I felt qualified to say it.”

When students understand these rules of response, they also avoid the trap of responding with “that’s good” or “I like that.” They don’t focus on grammar, spelling, or usage errors in place of content and voice. (I’ve even heard them playfully correct each other when one slides into those less-helpful comments!) One of the values of personal responses is that authors are free to take them as opinion, not command.

“We didn’t have to take people’s advice. What everyone said were just their opinions, not set in stone. We knew taking people’s advice was an option.”

Critics: do this!

Bottom line: let this author know what got through to you! Write as the author reads, as you read, and as others respond. Hand these to the author. Make sure you’ve had a good chance to read the writing. Give specific reactions to specific parts—passages, lines, phrases, individual words. Try to use statements beginning with “I.”

What to say: quotes from students I got the picture this part made me think . . . these lines are effective because . . . that sentence makes me believe what you’re saying I saw this . . . I was right there with you I think you got the point across that you . . . that part was key to showing your effect I was confused by . . . I’m having trouble with . . . it tripped me up a little . . . I was lost at . . . this broke the flow for me . . . I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say . . . I don’t quite understand why . . . I think you were stronger in your first paragraph

My student David realized this: “This isn’t anything that can be taught. You can get the gist, but you have to experience it.”

Elbow suggests fifteen to twenty minutes per piece for reading and responses

That is, a piece is read twice—this takes about five minutes—and another fifteen minutes are given over to responses of about three minutes each. This gives enough time for meaningful response, but not so much time that students wander off.

Gradually, I have found twenty minutes per student to be a good guideline.

For organization’s sake, I earmark the same day every week for these groups (see Elbow 1998b, 84). When Wednesday comes, for instance, we all know what we’re doing.

The premise behind the response groups is to create the experience of voices in an audience, a polyphony, a varied sample.

It is the multiplicity of reactions that helps authors realize the effect their prose will have on any given audience.

It’s a vulnerable situation, to be sure, sharing one’s work with peers.

Each group member has a number. Each meeting, one or two numbers rotate. For instance, I’ll say “Today, all number threes move one group to the left,” or “this week, number sixes and twos move to the right,” or whatever mix I feel will benefit the class that day. This arrangement offers both consistency and freshness. It also allows me a surreptitious way of separating students who are not able to work well together

I monitor the groups, especially the first few sessions, to make sure that things go smoothly and that students aren’t slipping into less useful response habits

Elbow suggests teachers join the groups as members, bringing their own writing for discussion.

teacherless writing class

The response groups give me the precious commodity of time when all eyes aren’t on me. After the second session, or when I’m sure they don’t need me any more, I set up conferences. This I love, as do my students.

Students sign up to meet with me for ten minutes during the period.

Elbow’s response groups, as he envisioned them, are voluntary meetings of writers coming together outside the school setting to improve their craft.

in my groups

Participation is required.

“When we comment on other peoples’ pieces, it made us more confident to comment on more famous author’s writings,”

Elbow (1998b, 96) suggests avoiding negative feedback entirely for the first three or four meetings

before the first group in which negative reactions are allowed, I give explicit permission to be honest and straightforward. I address the class about growing pains. Real growth is uncomfortable, I remind them, and writing is no different.

Paraphrasing Elbow, I ask them to imagine how crummy it would feel if no one had anything helpful to say about something they’d worked on for hours. I also advise they use some of Elbow’s other techniques: summarize the piece, look for its center of gravity, or tell what they feel it is about (Elbow and Belanoff 2000, 511–513).

I believe

that these groups work in part because they call on skills that every person already has or can develop, most particularly the ability to articulate as an audience member a reaction to the parts or the entirety of a piece of work.

About the Author Anne Marie Liebel teaches at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, and is a part-time instructor at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania. She is a teacher-consultant with the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

Higher-ed film students get exemption; K-12, other studies left out

By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor

The change comes as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a U.S. copyright law that criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) that controls access to copyrighted works. The Copyright Office, which meets to discuss exemption proceedings every three years, oversees management of the DMCA.

Renee Hobbs, professor of communication at the School of Communications and Theater at Temple University in Philadelphia, along with a small handful of other higher ed educators, formally petitioned the Copyright Office in 2009 to receive an exemption that would allow educators and students to legally “rip” excerpts of copy-protected movie DVDs for comment and criticism.

this change will help teachers who are using “remixing” (using excerpts from copyrighted materials, such as image, video, and sound to create something new) and other instructional uses of copyrighted materials to promote language and literacy skills that build critical thinking and communication skills.

students may use excerpts from recent and historical movies that feature an end-of-the-world theme and then write a voiceover that comments on how cultural fears are embodied in popular movies.

“Remix videos are not ‘highbrow’ and are easily accessible to the general public,” Hobbs said. “They can be used to question some of the assumptions of contemporary culture and offer a critical perspective.”

before the new ruling, the DMCA deemed it illegal to rip video by bypassing the copy-protect code on a movie DVD using easily available software like Handbrake

Media literacy educators depend on the use of copyrighted materials–we can’t do our job without using them. Educators want to be lawful, and we didn’t want to bypass encryption when it wasn’t legal to do so.”

Hobbs said she will feel more confident about requiring her students to use screen capture tools like Jing to develop writing and speaking skills.

not all rulings are created equal.

Students can rip movie excerpts legally, but only if they are film/media studies majors–meaning students in subjects like history and sociology still won’t have the exemption. K-12 student and teachers are still also at a disadvantage.

The Copyright Office deemed K-12 teachers and students ineligible for exemption, and indicated that they should instead use only screen captures of a film, because K-12 doesn’t need access to visually high-quality clips.

“Even though the film industry acknowledges the legal rights of educators and students to create film clip compilations, they pointed out that it doesn’t have to be easy.”

Hobbs explained that screen capture tools used by many K-12 schools, such as Jing or Camtasia, don’t require bypassing the DVD’s encryption code. That encryption code is known as Content Scramble System or CSS, and is employed on almost all commercially available DVDs in order to protect DRM.

“The Copyright Office wanted to limit the exemption only to those groups, who could prove a reasonable harm, and who could demonstrate that bypassing CSS encryption is the only way to accomplish fair use purposes,

Unbelievably, when I tried to login to Edublogs.tv, I was automatically forwarded to the Edublogs.org site. Imagine the shock…all my videos/audio, gone. Without notice. Maybe that was in the terms of agreement, maybe it was scrawled in illegible writing at the bottom of a bulletin board in Australia or somewhere down under, but wow. I searched for the notice using Google, but nothing. Only silence.

What?!? Could it be that Edublogs.tv has been shut down without so much as an announcement? I know it existed, having trusted Edublogs.tv with multiple audios and videos…now, they are all inaccessible! Is this what living in the cloud is like?

Unbelievable that Edublogs.tv should close its door without a general announcement…or did I miss the news posted on a bulletin board in some other country?

Is no one else experiencing the loss? The real beauty of Edublogs.tv was that it offered a place to host audio AND video for educators. Now that service is gone, leaving a gaping hole.

Saddened by the loss, bewildered by the lack of info (ok I’ve googled for about 10 minutes to no avail) about the closure. And, goodbye to my video and audio on that site. Sheesh.

Forgive the hyperbole, since hot and flaming may not be the best way to describe the new YouTube videos from Dr. Chris Moersch on the Levels of Teaching Innovation (LOTI)! But you will have to make that determination.

Here’s the announcement:

It’s officical! I have been working on getting these videos edited and uploaded for what seems like forever, but The LoTi Classroom officially has its own YouTube channel. There are five videos where Chris analyzes classroom videos based on the H.E.A.T framework. I am pretty excited about how they turned out, but I would also welcome any comments or suggestions you might have before we tackle the next round.

If you don’t know about HEAT, you will definitely want to check out these other videos that Chris recorded when he came to my city some time ago. Those ARE on fire, probably because of the visual effect (smile).

I made the following suggestion, slightly edited to reflect new info I just became aware of:

You know, though, that most schools can’t access YouTube videos.

Would you also consider getting your own account at TeacherTube.com and VImeo? That way, you could easily share the appropriate video source with campuses that can’t access YouTube.

Are you releasing them under Creative Commons Copyright ShareAlike-Noncommercial-Attribution? That way, folks will get really excited they can re-use your content under that copyright. To get even farther reach, drop the “noncommercial” expectation. That way, those videos will appear EVERYWHERE in content portals organized by commercial vendors.

In a previous blog entry, Excuses, Excuses…, one anonymous commenter makes the point that a thin client lab would limit our students to being strictly consumers. I challenge that assertion with these points:

Our libraries are setup to be places where students “consume” information. Yet, web-based tools–such as Diigo–empower us to do so much more with the information we consume. With social bookmarking/annotation tools, I am able to gather information, tag it, and share it with others in a variety of ways, including email and blogs, including adding my own comments. Does a thin client machine means we are forced to be consumers? No…it’s how we use those tools.

You could also look at this from the GoogleDocs/Zoho/Collaborative word processing tools that facilitate real time composition, revising and editing, whether singly or in groups. All can be done with thin client browsers.

At a time when the browser is pre-eminent tool of creation, dissemination, simply imagining passive learners as lumps of information consumers is pure fabrication.

It’s fascinating to read how higher education is using social bookmarking tools, as shared in Farwell and Waters piece below from JOLT. Many of us are still bound by old approaches to interacting with web-based content, failing to consider how new tools can be web-based and empower students to be creators, collaborators, and disseminators of ideas and information. Remixing content doesn’t require a high-end multimedia computer…remixing text is a perfectly valid approach using a thin client lab of machines.

One such outlet, online classes, has seen a strong increase in enrollment over the past six years. With more than 4.6 million people, mostly undergraduates, enrolling in at least one online course in fall of 2008, students are showing that they are comfortable with the concept of technology in education (Allen & Seaman, 2010).

can provide inexpensive, and often free, alternatives to printed materials. Podcasting has become a common method of provid ing audio and video content to students, and Apple has launched iTunes University to allow instructors to manage, distribute, and control access to educational material, such as lectures, announcements and news, and special sessions with guest speakers (McKinney, Dyck, & Luber, 2009).

Online technologies

Piontek and Conklin (2009) introduce a variety of social media applications that can be used in higher education and show how blogging, web-conferencing, and wikis can be used in virtual and traditional classroom environments. While these social media applications have been praised for increasing interaction, Payne (2009) points out that there are times when one-way communication is necessary.

Behan and Boylan (2009) point out that social bookmarking should be considered by instructors in higher education because it brings together traditional one-way strategies of information dissemination, but it also allows for the sharing and evaluation of links by users. In essence, social bookmarking is an online catalog of hyperlinks that users have found helpful and want to share.

Many social bookmarking applications allow individuals to vote on a link’s usefulness or comment on the accuracy of the information it conveys. Because of this interaction, social bookmarking has been considered one of the most powerful Web 2.0 tools for higher education (Page & Ali, 2009). However, social bookmarking may be the least known form of social media applications by students today (Grosseck, 2008).

using pirated copies of textbooks. One study found that 27 percent of the respondents admitted to seeking illegal copies of textbooks online and 8 percent reported in succeeding in the download of the textbook (Young, 2008). While the study sample was small, only 500, it may be pointing to larger trends. Textbook torrents, online sites pointing towards free shared downloads, are easy to find online.

social media applications have aided in educating large numbers of people because information spreads easily from person to person and because it facilitates conversations through blogging, video-sharing, and being able to comment on Web-based materials (Mason & Rennie, 2007; Rollet, Lux, Strohmaier, Dosinger, & Tochtermann, 2007).

Social bookmarking may also be tool that will allow faculty and students to cut down on costs while getting the most up-to-date information. Sites, such as Delicious.com and Diigo, serve as repositories for user bookmarks much as the Internet browser bookmark ability does. However, since these sites are online and not linked to a specific computer, the information becomes available from any computer with Internet access.

Through tagging, the user can label and organize the information according to his or her own vocabulary and use, not having to conform to an established order of classification (Etches-Johnson, 2006). These sites allow for more interaction with the information as users decide what information to tag and share (Rokolj, 2008; Pack, 2007; Stephens, 2007).

Social bookmarking sites have some clear advantages that facilitate learning.

First, the social bookmarking account is independent from specific platforms. The site and account can be accessed using any operating system or Internet browser that the individual uses to access the Internet.

easy to use as no special knowledge of HTML programming is needed to save sites, and the search function that allows a user to explore others’ bookmarks is similar to using an Internet search engine.

social bookmarking allows the user to see how many other people have found a particular bookmark useful because it shows how many people have added a resource to their own account (a la Delicious.com) or have given it a thumbs-up rating (a la Digg.com).

disadvantages

Vander Wal (2007) created the term, “folksonomy,” to describe the phenomenon seen on social bookmarking sites whereby one common Web site is described using hundreds of different labels or tags based on the differing perspectives and languages.

social bookmarking may create feelings of information overload for users due to the large number of links and significant amount of time needed to browse through the links.

social bookmarking has been identified as one of the best social software resources for instructors (Bryant, 2006). Social bookmarking allows students to explore relevant, timely material to their coursework (Olaniran, 2009).

most students are still largely unaware of social bookmarking and the impact that it could have on their educational experiences.

helpful to understand how Delicious.com was used for the “Social Media and Public Relations” course

One female public relations undergraduate summed up the course Delicious account as “ a centralized place where we can go to get the weekly readings, and the tags make it easy to separate out the readings for each week. It doesn’t require us to register or have a separate login.” Essentially, the professor would select 8-10 links from trade journals, relevant blogs, and popular news pieces that touched on various topics or relayed helpful information.

using social bookmarking in an educational setting, particularly online learning and distance education courses, is a positive approach to enhancing students’ learning experiences.

the ease of social bookmarking technology, and the broad range of materials available via the Internet that can add to the educational experience.

Given the significant amount of students unaware of social bookmarking, it can be assumed that some educators are also unaware of the topic. For this reason, it is necessary to briefly outline how to establish a social bookmarking account. First, it is helpful to have a variety of links already in mind that can be shared with students, research and teaching assistants, or other faculty members. This list could be created from scratch, or it could be an existing Internet browser list of favorite sites. Next decide which social bookmarking service offers the desired options desired. While not the purpose of this paper, it should be noted that resources exist to compare and contrast the leading social bookmarking services (Pandia, 2006; Hammond, Hannoy, Lund, & Scott, 2005). Once a service is decided upon, join the site by providing personal contact information or by merging existing free e-mail accounts with the site (e.g., Delicious.com is a Yahoo! company). Depending on the service, there are a variety of ways to create the links to share either through automatically copying an existing list or manually copying and pasting URLs into the directory. Once the links are in place, it is imperative to label, or tag, the links so that they can be easily accessed by your directory of tags.

Social bookmarking sites can be more advantageous for sharing reading materials than using closed course management systems (such as WebCT, Blackboard, D2L, among others) provided by schools in that they easily allow for further investigation on a topic of interest or a topic with which the student is struggling and provide students with skills they may find useful in their chosen career.

Grosseck (2008) suggests that faculty members create an account for the entire class using a common user name and password, divide the class into groups, and then assign groups different weeks or lectures throughout the semester that they are responsible for uploading different links to the class account so that it reflects the students as well as the educator adds. These small groups, or learning communities can help create a solid understanding of the benefits of social bookmarking because it requires that they be an active participant rather than solely clicking on readings passively. The contribution of and tagging links is a constructive cognitive activity that engages students in the learning process. This can only bring benefits to students who have problems learning and have difficulty in organizing materials (Martin, 2008).

Grosseck (2008) suggests that educators not only use social bookmarking accounts to provide course readings, but also create assignments using the social media technology. Possibilities for assignments include researching how information is stored and shared on the sites (e.g., how do people categorize materials) and what do social bookmarking accounts with large followings have in common with one another (e.g., notes about links, tags, rating systems).